Twitter: A fake Elon Musk scam spreads after hacking accounts

Multimedia playback is not supported on your device

Several scammers hacked several popular and verified Twitter accounts to promote an advertisement using the name and likeness of Tesla's leader, Elon Musk.

Matalan, a British fashion retailer, Pathe UK, a film distributor, and Pantheon Books, an American publisher, have been taken over by crooks.

The scam used promoted tweets – where Twitter is paid by advertisers make a tweet appear to a wider audience.

The tweets have since been deleted and many accounts have been recovered, although some have been left blank until their owners re-enter their name and profile picture.

The fraudsters targeted several "verified" accounts (marked with a blue check mark) and changed the name and image to those of Mr. Musk.

The tweet then prompted users to part with a small amount of Bitcoin, a digital motto, to receive more.

Several other audited accounts, which have also been controlled by crooks, appear in the tweet's comments to assert that they have received Mr Musk's Bitcoin.

A spokesman for Twitter told the BBC that he "does not comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons".

Checked

By using accounts with Twitter's own check mark (a blue check mark), the account looks legitimate at first glance and can therefore trick the reader into believing that it is official.

But many messages still carry the marks of classic scams – including frequent spelling mistakes (see "Bitcoic" and "suppoot" in the tweet above) and a request for money.

The account itself is also incorrect. A legitimate tweet from Elon Musk would read @elonmusk next to the blue checkmark. In this case, it is @patheuk – because the account originally belonged to the Pathe UK film distributor.

By clicking on any of the scam links, users are advised to check out a page where they are asked to send from 0.1 to 1 Bitcoin (£ 491 to £ 4,491) to fraudsters – with the promise that they would receive a 10 Bitcoin as a reward.

Victims do not receive any bitcoin after sending money to crooks.

The scam seems more reliable because several other compromised accounts respond to the tweet by saying that it works.

For example, the tweet above seems to have been praised by verified accounts such as boxer Rayton Okwiri, the blogger Sarah Scoop, and Swansea City AFC Ladies.

Promotion

The scam tweet has been posted by several verified accounts on Twitter.

British fashion retailer Matalan, Pathe UK film distributor and American publisher Pantheon Books were among those whose accounts were reset after hacking.

Pathe UK has since issued a statement confirming that his account had been "hacked by an unknown third party".

A first form of scam was spotted for the first time in March, when accounts using Mr Musk's name and image to ask for Bitcoin appeared.

It's become so common on the social network that the Tesla leader was briefly blocked from his own Twitter account after parodied the scam by sending a tweet asking, "Do you want to buy Bitcoin?".

Now, the scam has become more nuanced as it uses Twitter's own check to make it more compelling.

A spokesman for Twitter told the BBC that the company had "dramatically improved the way we approach cryptocurrency scams on the platform."

"In recent weeks, the number of user impressions has been divided by 10, while we continue to invest in more proactive tools to detect spammy and malicious activities."

By Tom Gerken, UGC & Social News