A group of hackers used the Gate io Twitter account, a cryptocurrency exchange, to promote illegal activity. Fraudsters used the social media account to publish a phony giveaway of Tether (USDT) in an effort to gain access to the users’ wallets.
They tweeted to ask users to connect their wallets with a bogus website so that they may be able to drain cash by promising 500,000 USDT in prizes. The tweet includes a link to a phony, identical-appearing mirror website that establishes a connection with the business’s main website. Hackers explicitly modify the name of the website from gate.io to gate.com.
In recent years, the general adoption of the cryptocurrency business has grown significantly. To date, thousands of institutions and small businesses have joined with cryptocurrency firms to use their services for payment processing and other things. However, with all of these events, hackers have unluckily increased their efforts to steal peoples’ hard-earned money and trap them online.
Thankfully, the business has taken back control of its official Twitter account and has deleted the promotion of phony freebies. Pecksheild, a blockchain security company, was the first to report the hack and forbid the public from interacting with the affected website. The tweet from security company Peckcsheild reads:
#PeckShieldAlert #Phishing Seems like crypto-exchange Gate[.]io's verified Twitter account @gate_io was compromised & has been used to share links to fraudulent $USDT GIVEAWAY.
gąte[.]com is the phishing site.
Thanks @aayushrai11 and @grpolice for the intel pic.twitter.com/cpZ6CgAADm— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) October 22, 2022
It wasn’t the first time that well-known businesses or tech tycoons’ official Twitter accounts had been stolen. Hackers have previously gained access to the social media accounts of famous people including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, and Bill Gates, among others, as social media platforms have grown to be the most popular ways for large organizations to communicate with their community.
