Hackers Post Crypto Scams On British Army's YouTube, Twitter Accounts

Hackers infiltrated the British Army's Twitter and YouTube accounts to promote cryptocurrency scams and on YouTube, they replaced the British Army's videos with old live streams featuring Tesla CEO and former Twitter CEO.

Representative image. Courtesy: Getty

Hackers infiltrated the British Army's Twitter and YouTube accounts to promote cryptocurrency scams and on YouTube, they replaced the British Army's videos with old live streams featuring Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The UK Ministry of Defence confirmed in a tweet late on Sunday that they were aware of a breach of the Army's Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation was underway.

"The Army takes information security extremely seriously and is resolving the issue. Until their investigation is complete it would be inappropriate to comment further," the Ministry further posted.

Both the social media accounts were later restored. "The breach of the Army's Twitter and YouTube accounts that occurred earlier today has been resolved and an investigation is underway," the Ministry said on Monday.

The hacked Twitter account posted various retweets for NFT giveaways, and its pinned tweet linked users to a fake NFT minting website. The hackers also entered the British Army's YouTube channel, deleting all its videos, as well as changing its name and profile picture to resemble the legit investment firm Ark Invest.

Hackers replaced the British Army's videos with a series of old live streams featuring Dorsey and Musk. A Twitter spokesperson later said that the British Army's account has since been locked and secured and the account holders have now regained access and the account is back up and running".

Meanwhile, recently Google has identified spyware and hacking tools owned by an Italian vendor that was used to spy on Apple iPhones and Android smartphones. In a report shared on June 23, the search engine giant said it has been tracking the activities of commercial spyware vendors for years. The Italian company identified by Google is RCS Labs, which uses a combination of tactics, including atypical drive-by downloads as initial infection vectors, to target mobile users on both iOS and Android operating systems. The identified victims were located in Italy and Kazakhstan.