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Open Season
On Monday evening, one of X-formerly-OpenAI’s official accounts on Twitter was hijacked by crypto scammers, who used the opportunity to peddle fake tokens called “$OPENAI.”
“We are excited to announce $OPEANAI, a token that bridges the gap between AI and blockchain technology,” said a now-deleted tweet from the OpenAI Newsroom account, which has more than 54,000 followers.
“All OpenAI users will be eligible to receive an initial supply of $OPENAI,” the company continues. “Holding $OPENAI will grant you access to all of our upcoming beta programs.”
According to TechCrunch, the post contained a link to a phishing site that mimicked OpenAI’s, enticing unwitting users to click a large “CLAIM $OPENAI” button, which opens a menu to connect to a cryptocurrency wallet – a common tactic in these scams – and will almost certainly be used to plunder the funds stored in the wallet.
Not enough response
Before you proceed: Do not purchase any cryptocurrency that claims collaboration with OpenAI, as OpenAI is not involved in any such projects.
According to Bloomberg, the company confirmed that it was aware of the breach and was investigating, but that’s all it has said so far on the matter. It’s unclear how many people fell victim to the scam.
The post was removed an hour later, but the fake website remains up, although visitors to it are greeted with a “suspected phishing” warning page.
Since the hack, the Newsroom account, which was created in June and only began active use this month, has not issued a statement or follow-up tweets. It didn’t take long for the account to go down.
Weak defense
Fortunately, it wasn’t OpenAI’s main account, which has over 3 million followers, that was compromised, otherwise the damage could have been much worse.
Still, this is the fifth hack of an OpenAI-related account in about two years, Cointelegraph noted, which could mean the startup has cybersecurity concerns that need to be addressed, is being targeted by a huge number of attacks, or both.
Four of these breaches were used to promote the same fake $OPENAI token, including the Twitter account of the AI company’s chief technology officer Mira Murati, which was hacked in June last year, and more recently, the account of its chief scientist Jakub Paczocki, which was hacked just a few months ago.
The company suffered its largest data breach to date last year when hackers broke into a private forum used by OpenAI employees to discuss trade secrets.
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