{"id":2195,"date":"2022-07-12T04:20:24","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T11:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2023-09-27T06:12:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T13:12:04","slug":"hackers-breach-british-armys-social-media-to-promote-nfts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/hackers-breach-british-armys-social-media-to-promote-nfts\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackers breach British Army\u2019s social media to promote NFTs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The British Army has confirmed that crypto hackers successfully took over their YouTube and Twitter accounts to promote NFTs. They have since apologized and are now conducting a full investigation<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

What happened<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On Sunday, July 3rd, people began to notice some odd activity on the British Army\u2019s social media channels. On its Twitter, according to The Guardian<\/a>, the name \u201cBritish Army\u201d was replaced with \u201c’pssssd\u201d and later \u201cBAPESCAN\u201d and it had a profile picture featuring a monkey in face paint. Psssd is the name of an actual NFT collection, while BAPESCAN is a reference to the ‘Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT series.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of the army\u2019s usual user description of, \u201cFollow us for news and information on deployments, training exercises, ceremonial duties & regimental events. Recruiting @armyjobs\u201d, it was updated to first say, “We all have a dark side ||| What will yours look like? ||| An nft collection created by @tmw_buidls” and then \u201c#1 metavesto clan on the ETH chain with multi-billion dollar experience. Powered by @chaintchlabs\u201d. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twitter timeline was soon taken over by tweets and retweets pertaining to NFTs and NFT giveaways. Most worryingly, one Tweet claimed that the UK was attacking Pakistan, according to PCGamer<\/a>. You can take a look at the takeover timeline on the Internet Archive\u2019s Wayback Machine<\/a>. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the British Army YouTube account was updated to be called Ark Invest, a real global investment firm, and started using its logo. No evidence suggests that any of these organizations were involved in this breach. According to<\/a> Mashable, hackers uploaded several videos to the YouTube channel, the content of which manipulated interviews with famous figures like Elon Musk and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to make it seem like they were promoting cryptocurrency. These videos also directed users to Bitcoin and Ethereum scams. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, the British Ministry of Defence Press Office tweeted<\/a>, \u201cWe are aware of a breach of the army\u2019s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway. We take information security<\/a> extremely seriously and are resolving the issue. Until the investigation is complete it would be inappropriate to comment further.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrap up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This event is just the most recent in a long line of high-profile figures and organizations, ranging from Bill Gates to Kanye West, which crypto hackers have targeted. It further highlights the need for social engineering awareness<\/a> and robust security implementation among social media workers, especially when it could potentially trigger an international incident.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The British Army has confirmed that crypto hackers successfully took over their YouTube and Twitter accounts to promote NFTs. They have since apologized and are now conducting a full investigation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2619,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions\/2619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssls.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}