One of OpenAI’s official Twitter accounts was compromised to promote a fake cryptocurrency, marking the fourth time a Chat GPT developer has been caught up in a similar scheme.
The account urged followers to claim a non-existent token called “$OPENAI” that would “bridge the gap” between blockchain technology and AI.
“All OpenAI users are eligible to claim an initial supply of $OPENAI,” the tweet read.
The now-deleted post said that claiming the tokens would give purchasers “access to all of our future beta programs.”
Comments on the fake post were disabled, likely a deliberate ploy by the hackers to make the thread look less suspicious.
The OpenAI Newsroom, which only launched earlier this month, has 54,000 followers and focuses on topics such as the company’s product updates.
The tweet linked to a malicious phishing website made to look like OpenAI’s official homepage.
OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati’s account was breached in June 2023, and the company’s chief scientist, Jakub Paczocki, suffered a similar incident in June 2024.
OpenAI researcher Jason Wei’s X account was also hacked in September 2024. In both cases, the hackers posted similar messages advertising the $OPENAI crypto token.
Although the company appears to be popular among crypto scammers, at the time of writing OpenAI has not publicly announced any crypto or blockchain-related projects.
Unlike many of the more well-known Twitter hacks, the perpetrators did not promote a specific coin or airdrop to boost its value.
In the previous OpenAI Twitter attack, the attackersWallet drainer.”
This involves unsuspecting users being tricked into entering their wallet details and having their valuables, such as cryptocurrencies or non-fungible tokens (NFTs), stolen.
Few businesses, regardless of size or technical expertise, seem to be immune to having their Twitter pages held hostage to promote their coins.
Last week, accounts of Brazilian soccer star Neymar Jr., computer maker Lenovo and Oscar-winning film director Oliver Stone were hacked to promote the Solana-based meme coin $HACKED.
In 2020, bitcoin scammers compromised the pages of President Barack Obama, Apple, Uber, and rapper Kanye West in what was believed to be the largest scam of its kind at the time.
Decrypt has reached out to OpenAI for comment; the company has not yet commented on the breach at the time of writing.
Editor: Stacey Elliott.
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