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 happy to announce $OPEANAI [sic]: the gap between Al and blockchain technology,” the put up learn. “All OpenAI users are eligible to claim a piece of $OPENAI’s initial supply. Holding $OPENAI will grant access to all of our future beta programs.”
Of course, $OPENAI doesn’t exist — and the put up on X linked to a phishing web site designed to imitate the professional 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, seemingly in an try and steal these customers’ login credentials.
As of publication time, each the put up and web site had been nonetheless up — as was a repost and a reply promising “further information” in regards to the token “[to] come later in the week.” Comments on the malicious X put up had been disabled, making the hack much less apparent than it is likely to 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 the same 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 equivalent to the put up on the OpenAI Newsroom account as we speak.
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.
Other high-profile X accounts belonging to tech firms and celebrities have been hacked lately to advertise crypto scams. In maybe essentially the most notorious instance, in 2020, hackers focused accounts belonging to Apple, Elon Musk and Joe Biden to put up the tackle of a bitcoin pockets with the declare that the quantity of any funds made to the tackle could be doubled and despatched again.
Americans misplaced $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, a 45% enhance from 2022, based on the FBI. 2024 is on monitor to be as unhealthy — or worse. More than 50,000 scams had been reported via the primary half of this 12 months, costing shoppers near $2.5 billion, per the FTC.
