Crypto Scammers Hack OpenAI CTO’s Twitter Account, Promote Fake Airdrop: Details

These fake scam tweets exposed all of Murati’s over 126,000 followers on the micro-blogging platform to a financial risk.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Manas Mitul | Updated: 2 June 2023 15:47 IST

Crypto Scammers Hack OpenAI CTO’s Twitter Account, Promote Fake Airdrop: Details

Photo Credit: Twitter

The fake airdrop post on Murati’s Twitter attracted over 79,000 views

Highlights

Crypto scammers are swarming all over social networking platforms
They trick investors into revealing personal information
Twitter and LinkedIn have become hunting grounds for crypto scammers

Crypto scammers are infamous on Twitter and are always on the lookout for unsuspecting victims and high-profile targets. In a latest development, crypto scammers have hacked the Twitter account of OpenAI CTO, Mira Murati. Soon after the hackers gained access to Maruti's account, promotional tweets around a fake crypto airdrop were posted via that account in the early hours of Friday, June 2. These fake scam tweets exposed all of Murati's over 126,000 followers on the micro-blogging platform to a financial risk.

“We proudly present $OPENAI, a groundbreaking token driven by artificial intelligence-based language model. Visit chaingpt.build to see if you are eligible for an airdrop directly to your $ETH addresses,” the scam post said, along with showing a malicious web address for people to click on.

These tweets were live on Murati's Twitter page for around an hour, and reportedly garnered 79,600 views as well as 83 re-tweets.

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While these posts are no longer visible on Murati's Twitter account, screenshots of the questionable tweets are doing the rounds on the micro-blogging platform.

:rotating_light: Twitter account belonging to OpenAI CTO Mira Murati got hacked by crypto scammers :rotating_light: pic.twitter.com/k3oWsDo3cI
— John Jmz (@johnj1138) June 2, 2023

Usually, when such scam links are posted via hacked verified accounts of public figures, aware community members make it a point to warn others against engaging with these posts via the comments section.

In this case, hackers restricted the comments sector so that nobody could post any alert for unsuspecting people below the post.

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In addition, they also copied the design and outlook of a real project called ChainGPT to make their own infected site, that could have duped visitors financially by tricking them into signing access requests to their crypto wallets.

It is notable, that crypto scammers chose to promote a crypto scam via Murati's Twitter account at a time when OpenAI's ChatGPT platform is enjoying all the rage it has triggered around the world. The generative AI platform creates image or text content based on the keywords that users feed in.

As of now, neither OpenAI nor Murati have addressed the incident on any public platform.

Earlier in March, the Twitter account of India's News24 was compromised by crypto hackers to advertise a fake crypto airdrop. The same month, the Twitter handle of Raj Bhavan, the governor of Madhya Pradesh state, was breached by crypto scammers and a fake Ripple airdrop was promoted.

Previously, Twitter accounts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian Medical Association (IMA), and the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) have been breached previously by crypto scammers to advertise scams.

Industry experts have time and again warned Web3 community members against visiting suspicious sites or clicking on random crypto-related links.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Crypto Scammers, OpenAI, Twitter

Radhika Parashar Email Radhika

Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More