Crypto scammers posing as real brands on X are easily hacking YouTubers
For months, popular fighting game YouTubers have been under attack. Even the seemingly most cautious among them have been duped by sophisticated phishing attacks that hack their accounts to push cryptocurrency scams by convincingly appearing to offer legitimate sponsorships from established brands.
These scams often start with bad actors seemingly taking over verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) with substantial followings and then using them to impersonate marketing managers at real brands who can be easily found on LinkedIn.
The fake X accounts go to great lengths to appear legitimate. They link to brands’ actual websites and populate feeds with histories seemingly spanning decades by re-posting brands’ authentic posts.
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance
Related Knowledge Center: Social media
Social media platforms are the source of news for millions of people — and they have a fraught and ever-shifting relationship with the enterprises that provide that news.
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