In the newest example of Elon Musk’s identity (opens in new tab) being abused in cryptocurrency scams, a threat actor is targeting the eccentric billionaire’s newest Twitter followers, security experts have warned.
As reported by BleepingComputer, a scammer has created a nameless Twitter account, and placed the company logo for the profile picture, to create a false sense of legitimacy. They then started monitoring Elon Musk’s Twitter account for new followers, and adding them to a list called “Deal of the Year”.
Opening the list (which is public and visible to all) shows the victims a fake Elon Musk tweet in which he invites his new followers to a cryptocurrency giveaway.
Fake giveaway
“I decided to randomly choose 1,000 new followers who can participate to the biggest crypto giveaway,” the tweet says, and if nothing else, with the obvious grammar mistakes should be enough of a red flag.
The tweet also shares a link – freedomgiveaway.net, where victims need to go and complete a short quiz in order to participate in the “giveaway”. The quiz is mostly public knowledge, but it doesn’t really matter if you answer correctly, or not.
As soon as you’re done, the site will ask you for your cryptocurrency address, and promise to send 5,000 BTC to the lucky winners (roughly $84 million at press time). But before they can be credited with the fancy crypto, they must first deposit a small amount into “Elon’s” address – anywhere between 0.02 and 1 BTC.
The website also lists plenty of fake reviews praising the campaign, in order to make it more believable and to try and trick as many gullible investors as possible.
The address the victims should deposit money into can be found on this link (opens in new tab), and luckily enough, it would seem Elon Musk’s followers aren’t that naive – the wallet is empty and has so far seen zero interactions. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Via: BleepingComputer (opens in new tab)
