Newspaper Twitter account hacked to advertise Goblintown phishing rip-off

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A Twitter hacker has compromised the account of EL Common, a Latin American newspaper, to advertise a fraudulent goblintown.wtf giveaway, an Ethereum-based non-fungible token (NFT) undertaking, on-chain analyst @NFTherder unveiled.

Possibly somebody ought to inform the Latin American Newspaper Affiliation that one in every of their newspaper’s @ElUniversal twitter account was hacked on June 4th and has been spamming Goblingtown rip-off nft tweets ever since. I imply, they solely have 5 million followers … pic.twitter.com/rP55MEdDZo

— OKHotshot (@NFTherder) June 9, 2022

The attacker modified El Common’s Twitter title to goblintown.wtf, however left the username, @ElUniversal, intact. Moreover, the malicious actor linked a phishing URL to the account, hoping to steal from unwitting goblintown.wtf holders. The URL swaps the N on the town with M.

Based on @NFTherder, the attacker took management of El Common’s account – which has 5.1 million followers – on June 4. Since then, the hacker has posted fraudulent tweets, promising to airdrop an extra 10,000 Goblins.

The goblintown.wtf assortment has 9,999 NFTs, with the most affordable going for five Ethereum (ETH).

Whereas the extent of the assault stays unknown, a Twitter person going by @topshotkief.eth claims to have misplaced 10 NFTs to the rip-off. Particularly, the person alleges that the attacker stole two Mutant Ape Yacht Membership (MAYC) items and eight Cool Cats.

@NFTherder additional revealed:

In fact the Goblintowm rip-off does ApprovalForAll to steal the belongings of those who approve. It additionally appears the pockets accountable for @ElUniversal twitter account hack beforehand pulled off an Azuki Beanz rip-off.

After in-depth evaluation, the analyst discovered that the tackle behind the goblintowm rip-off and the Azuki Beanz assault is similar.

Attackers proceed concentrating on initiatives making headlines

This information comes after goblintown.wtf launched on Could 22 and shortly rose to the highest of NFT charts. Regardless of being lower than a month previous, the undertaking has recorded a buying and selling quantity exceeding $70 million, in accordance with knowledge from Cryptoslam. Goblintown.wtf’s success comes as flagship NFTs collections like CryptoPunks, BAYC, Meebits, and Mutant Ape proceed declining.

The goblintown.wtf rip-off comes as unhealthy actors proceed attacking the NFT area. Earlier this month, an attacker compromised the Discord server of Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Membership (BAYC) undertaking and stole roughly $355,000 price of NFTs.

Earlier than this, an exploit on BAYC’s Instagram account resulted within the theft of not less than 54 NFTs. This hack got here a number of days forward of Yuga Labs’ overhyped metaverse launch.

In Could, famend digital artist Mike Winkelmann – professionally often known as Beeple – had his Twitter account hacked. This assault got here after Beeple partnered with trend big Louis Vuitton to create 30 NFTs.