OpenAI’s official press account on X seems to have been compromised by the identical cryptocurrency scammers who did the identical with firm management in earlier months.
Late Monday afternoon, OpenAI Newsroom, an account OpenAI not too long ago created to highlight product- and policy-related bulletins, posted a few supposedly new OpenAI-branded blockchain token, “$OPENAI.”
“We’re very completely satisfied to announce $OPEANAI [sic]: the hole between Al and blockchain expertise,” the publish learn. “All OpenAI customers are eligible to say a chunk of $OPENAI’s preliminary provide. Holding $OPENAI will grant entry to all of our future beta applications.”
In fact, $OPENAI doesn’t exist — and the publish on X linked to a phishing web site designed to imitate the respectable OpenAI web site (minus the conspicuously incorrect URL “token-openai.com”). A outstanding “CLAIM $OPENAI” button on the faux web site inspired unsuspecting customers to attach their cryptocurrency wallets, possible in an try and steal these customers’ login credentials.
As of publication time, each the publish and web site had been nonetheless up — as was a repost and a reply promising “additional info” in regards to the token “[to] come later within the week.” Feedback on the malicious X publish had been disabled, making the hack much less apparent than it may be in any other case.
We’ve reached out to OpenAI and X for remark and can replace this text if we hear again.
It’s not the primary time accounts related to OpenAI have been compromised as part of phishing campaigns.
In June 2023, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s account posted an identical message selling the fictional $OPENAI crypto token. And simply three months in the past, the accounts of OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and OpenAI researcher Jason Wei had been hacked and used to publish rip-off posts an identical to the publish on the OpenAI Newsroom account right this moment.
Coinspeaker, reporting on the hack of Murati’s account final June, mentioned that the scammers used a “crypto drainer” device that will funnel all of the NFTs and tokens that victims had of their wallets to the scammers’ pockets as soon as they signed into the faux OpenAI web site.
Different high-profile X accounts belonging to tech corporations and celebrities have been hacked lately to advertise crypto scams. In maybe probably the most notorious instance, in 2020, hackers focused accounts belonging to Apple, Elon Musk and Joe Biden to publish the deal with of a bitcoin pockets with the declare that the quantity of any funds made to the deal with could be doubled and despatched again.
Individuals misplaced $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, a forty five% improve from 2022, in accordance to the FBI. 2024 is on observe to be as dangerous — or worse. Greater than 50,000 scams had been reported via the primary half of this yr, costing shoppers near $2.5 billion, per the FTC.
