Crypto hackers take over British Army accounts to shill NFTs

pcgamer.com:

The British Army's Twitter and Youtube accounts were hacked this weekend, apparently as part of a scheme to promote certain collections of NFTs (thanks, BBC(opens in new tab)). The twitter feed as it was can be viewed here(opens in new tab): essentially the hackers replaced all the imagery around the account, and began retweeting NFT-related schemes to the British Army's roughly 365,000 followers. They also renamed the account 'pssssd' and, later, 'Bapesclan'.

The army's Youtube account, on the other hand, played host to a bunch of those fake crypto videos where footage of Elon Musk is intercut with a particular crypto pitch, in order to give the false impression that the billionaire Tesla founder (and crypto enthusiast) is associated with a given scheme.

These elements of the attack were followed by a more concerning turn when the account decided to toy around with geopolitics, declaring that the UK was at war with Pakistan.

pic.twitter.com/86Ju1zOz09July 3, 2022

Obviously this didn't amount to anything, but in an age of misinformation it is all-too-easy to imagine how such stuff could be misused and persist online, long after control of the account is regained.

Shortly after the Pakistan post, the account was restored to its rightful owners and the various posts made by the hackers removed. The Army confirmed the hack and posted the following: «Apologies for the temporary interruption to our feed. We will conduct a full investigation and learn from this incident. Thanks for following us and normal service will now resume.»

The UK Ministry of Defence issued one of those ominously banal pieces of bureaucratic language:

The breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts that occurred earlier today has been resolved and