Scammers hacked the Cricket South Africa Twitter account yesterday and tried to dupe followers into a fraudulent “Bitcoin Lottery.”
Once the hackers had obtained access to the account, they pinned a tweet that read: “@OfficialCSA is partnering with @lunomoney for the first South African Bitcoin Lottery.” The crooks attached a Bitcoin wallet address to trick unknowing Twitter users into sending Bitcoin to them.
It was claimed that the winner of the lottery would receive 20 Bitcoin once the “competition” closed on January 15th.
The Intercontinental Cricket Council (ICC) on Sunday warned users to not “click on any links or engage with the account until such time as this is rectified.”
Following assistance from the ICC, administrators managed to regain control some hours later. Once they had done so, they tweeted: “Apologies to all our Twitter followers who were affected by the hack overnight.
“We are back in control & ready to bring you what promises to be an even more eventful Day 4 of Test cricket.”
The hackers’ tweets have since been deleted, but the IndianExpress managed to capture screenshots which reveal one of the spam tweets claimed that there had been “over 100 entries.”
It is not known how many were affected by the scam.
This is not the first time hackers and crypto scammers have taken to Twitter to deceive unwitting users.
Last year, hackers took over verified Twitter accounts and changed the names and profile pictures to impersonate tech titan Elon Musk.
Once they had done so, they released tweets suggesting Elon Musk would give away 10,000 Bitcoin, providing users sent between 0.1 to 2 Bitcoin to a scam Bitcoin wallet address.
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