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How exactly does a scam like this work? Access to someone's Twitter account only means that you can just post a link. People seem to have connected their wallet

by mihaic 3y ago

How exactly does a scam like this work? Access to someone's Twitter account only means that you can just post a link. People seem to have connected their wallet, but they still would need to sign a transaction after that. Did the users just auto-pilot click yes? Tangential, I can't believe the name X is actually being used by journalists, it's even worse that I expected from a sentence readability standpoint.

jeroenhd 3y ago
𝕏 is just a front for a phishing scam in these cases. No money or cryptocurrency is transfered directly. Scammers get access to a popular account with many followers, and tweet something like this: https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/vitalik-tweet.jpg https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/v... You don't need to get everyone in the cryptocurrency space to believe you, just a few people transferring funds from their wallet will make you rich.
- umeshunni 3y ago
  Looking at that tweet, I can't tell if it's a scam or just your regular cryptard NFT pump post.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    I think that's why it's such an effective scam, these types of posts are everywhere around cryptocurrency fanbases, but this time it came from a reputable person within the community.
- mihaic 3y ago
  And the "this is free for 24h" is just a red herring, to make it legitimate for people to speculate? Still crazy that such a semi-anonymous scam got 700k, sounds like there's still a lot of money in crypto ready to gamble.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    There have been free or very cheap NFTs in the past, and handing out free coins is the easiest way to get your cryptocurrency flowing. I'm no criminal, but if I were, I would definitely target cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Many of them are the perfect target, having access to large sums of money, having the ability and willingness to transfer funds in a near untraceable way, and often looking for a get-rich-quick scheme like those cryptomultimillionaires. Things like NFT smart contract that would transfer all of your NFTs when trying to get rid of them, coupled with unpleasant pictures, coupled with cryptoclout, publicly accessible profiles, and no method to refuse a transaction, have produced some ingenious thefts that nobody would even think possible ten years ago. Millions of real world dollars have been spent on pictures of monkeys, and millions have been lost after someone stole those pictures.
joncrocks 3y ago
You have to sign a transaction, but I _think_ the details of transactions can be obscure enough to not be clear what you're authorizing. Accidentally authorizing the transfer of tokens/NFTs, which are then drained.

by mihaic 3y ago

jeroenhd 3y ago

𝕏 is just a front for a phishing scam in these cases. No money or cryptocurrency is transfered directly. Scammers get access to a popular account with many followers, and tweet something like this: https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/vitalik-tweet.jpg https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/v... You don't need to get everyone in the cryptocurrency space to believe you, just a few people transferring funds from their wallet will make you rich.

umeshunni 3y ago
Looking at that tweet, I can't tell if it's a scam or just your regular cryptard NFT pump post.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  I think that's why it's such an effective scam, these types of posts are everywhere around cryptocurrency fanbases, but this time it came from a reputable person within the community.
mihaic 3y ago
And the "this is free for 24h" is just a red herring, to make it legitimate for people to speculate? Still crazy that such a semi-anonymous scam got 700k, sounds like there's still a lot of money in crypto ready to gamble.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  There have been free or very cheap NFTs in the past, and handing out free coins is the easiest way to get your cryptocurrency flowing. I'm no criminal, but if I were, I would definitely target cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Many of them are the perfect target, having access to large sums of money, having the ability and willingness to transfer funds in a near untraceable way, and often looking for a get-rich-quick scheme like those cryptomultimillionaires. Things like NFT smart contract that would transfer all of your NFTs when trying to get rid of them, coupled with unpleasant pictures, coupled with cryptoclout, publicly accessible profiles, and no method to refuse a transaction, have produced some ingenious thefts that nobody would even think possible ten years ago. Millions of real world dollars have been spent on pictures of monkeys, and millions have been lost after someone stole those pictures.

joncrocks 3y ago

You have to sign a transaction, but I _think_ the details of transactions can be obscure enough to not be clear what you're authorizing. Accidentally authorizing the transfer of tokens/NFTs, which are then drained.