Ever since the cryptocurrency industry has picked up the pace, the cybercrime rate has been on the rise all across the globe. This is the reason why cryptocurrency-related firms as well as social media platforms have started increasing their security and defense against such threats.
Despite all the efforts, hackers and cybercriminals have come up with newer ways of luring people and exploiting them. As the cryptocurrency sector is trending for the past couple of years, several firms have been making announcements in support of the cryptocurrency communities.
There are firms announcing airdrops for different cryptocurrencies while some are offering fragments of major cryptocurrencies. However, most of the announcements made pertaining to such airdrops and offerings are fake and scams.
The fraudsters are even using fake profiles and profiles of tech gurus and some of the most influential people in the world. They are doing it in order to gain the trust of their followers and then carry out their scams.
One of the most recurring scams on social media platforms related to cryptocurrencies is the profile hack scam. In such scams, the hackers are either setting up fake profiles impersonating influential people, such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates. In some cases, the hackers are even hacking the profiles of influential people and using them to lure people.
One of the recent victims of the profile hack and crypto-scam is the President of India “Narendra Modi”. It was on December 12, 2021, when the local media reports came in revealing that Modi’s Twitter profile had been hacked.
The hackers reportedly hacked Modi’s profile and made a Twitter announcement related to Bitcoin. In the announcement, the hackers spread misleading information about Bitcoin being inducted as a mainstream instrument for Indian investors.
In the fake announcement, the hackers claimed that as a result of the mainstream induction, the Indian Government was planning to redistribute Bitcoin. The news notified Modi’s followers that they could participate in the distribution and acquire a portion of the 500 BTCs.
However, the announcement asked the users to send their BTC to a particular BTC wallet address, and they would receive double of it. The announcement did mention that the users couldn’t be sent more than a certain value of BTC. Such an announcement lowered the factor of people’s doubt and detecting the fraud.
By the time, the cybersecurity teams established the fraud and acted upon it, the scammers had already preyed on some of the users. Surprisingly, this is not the first time Modi’s account has been hacked and used for such fraudulent activities.
It was back in September of 2020 when Modi’s account was hacked and used by hackers to lure innocent users.
