OpenAI’s official press account on X seems to have been compromised by the identical cryptocurrency scammers who did the identical with firm management in earlier months.
Late Monday afternoon, OpenAI Newsroom, an account OpenAI lately created to highlight product- and policy-related bulletins, posted a few supposedly new OpenAI-branded blockchain token, “$OPENAI.”
“We’re very blissful to announce $OPEANAI [sic]: the hole between Al and blockchain know-how,” the publish learn. “All OpenAI customers are eligible to say a bit of $OPENAI’s preliminary provide. Holding $OPENAI will grant entry to all of our future beta applications.”
After all, $OPENAI doesn’t exist — and the publish on X linked to a phishing website designed to imitate the authentic OpenAI web site (minus the conspicuously incorrect URL “token-openai.com”). A distinguished “CLAIM $OPENAI” button on the faux website inspired unsuspecting customers to attach their cryptocurrency wallets, doubtless in an try to steal these customers’ login credentials.
As of publication time, each the publish and website had been nonetheless up — as was a repost and a reply promising “additional data” concerning the token “[to] come later within the week.” Feedback on the malicious X publish had been disabled, making the hack much less apparent than it is perhaps in any other case.
We’ve reached out to OpenAI and X for remark and can replace this text if we hear again.
It’s not the primary time accounts related to OpenAI have been compromised as part of phishing campaigns.
In June 2023, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s account posted the same message selling the fictional $OPENAI crypto token. And simply three months in the past, the accounts of OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and OpenAI researcher Jason Wei had been hacked and used to publish rip-off posts similar to the publish on the OpenAI Newsroom account at this time.
Coinspeaker, reporting on the hack of Murati’s account final June, stated that the scammers used a “crypto drainer” instrument that will funnel all of the NFTs and tokens that victims had of their wallets to the scammers’ pockets as soon as they signed into the faux OpenAI website.
Different high-profile X accounts belonging to tech firms and celebrities have been hacked lately to advertise crypto scams. In maybe essentially the most notorious instance, in 2020, hackers focused accounts belonging to Apple, Elon Musk and Joe Biden to publish the handle of a bitcoin pockets with the declare that the quantity of any funds made to the handle could be doubled and despatched again.
People misplaced $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, a forty five% improve from 2022, in accordance to the FBI. 2024 is on observe to be as dangerous — or worse. Greater than 50,000 scams had been reported by the primary half of this 12 months, costing customers near $2.5 billion, per the FTC.
