Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin saw his X (formerly Twitter) account hacked on Sunday, with the attacker stealing over $650,000 from the crypto guru’s followers who opened a fraud link shared on his timeline.
The hacker claimed that the link would lead to a mint platform for NFTs allegedly released by Consensys, a well-known software provider. Little did some of Buterin’s 4.8 million followers realize that connecting their crypto wallets to the platform would cause them to lose their funds.
Several X users noticed the fake link, including the Ethereum founder’s father, Dmitriy Buterin, who advised everyone to ignore the hacker’s post as his son worked on restoring access to his account.
Buterin’s Regains Control of His X Account
As of this writing, it appears Vitalik has regained access to his account and deleted the scam post. Nonetheless, the damage has already happened. A good number of his followers have reported losing their crypto assets from their wallets. One X user claimed they had lost $10,345 worth of various digital assets to the hacker.
According to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, the hacker drained over $145,000 within an hour after they shared the fraud link. The figure skyrocketed to $650,000 later on Sunday. Notably, ZachXBT revealed that the attacker transferred an NFT they had stolen to Vitalik Buterin. The Ethereum creator has yet to comment on the hacking incident.
Meanwhile, the exact number of affected X users by the hack is still unclear. Buterin joins a growing list of prominent individuals who have seen their social media accounts hacked and their followers lose millions in crypto assets.
Such incidents have prompted a hot debate in recent months, with some people arguing that social media developers should compensate users for their losses. And with most hacks happening on X, the platform’s security has been criticized several times. On Sunday evening, Binance boss Changepeng Zhao said X needed to adopt security measures like those of financial platforms, such as the two-factor authentication (2FA) method.
Zhao claimed that hackers have attempted to gain access to his X account multiple times without succeeding.
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