By
Svetlana Soroka
April 30th, 2024
While the hackers were unsuccessful in their scheme, this is not the first time bad actors have hijacked celebrities’, important personalities’ and companies’ accounts on X to promote crypto scams.
In a pattern that’s becoming very familiar, hackers recently attempted to exploit the fame and popularity of Tom Holland, a famous British actor known for his role as Spider-Man, to exploit his followers. On April 16, the attackers hijacked Holland’s X account with 7 million followers, announcing a partnership with the world’s largest digital asset trading platform Binance for the launch of a Spider-Verse-themed crypto.
Marvel Confirms Actor’s Account Was Hacked
The tweet, which has now been deleted, encouraged fans to register for early access to the $SPIDER token and Spiderverse’s non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through a link to “spider verse.app”.
The scam link was also added to Holland’s bio to make it seem real and convince investors to invest in the purported scheme. The unexpected turn of events left many puzzled, especially since Holland has never promoted crypto or even engaged with NFTs before.
The incident raised concerns about the security of his social media accounts, as his absence from the platform likely made his account an easy target for hackers. To clarify the confusion online, Marvel confirmed in a post that the actor’s account was indeed hacked and he had nothing to do with the post.
Tom Holland’s Twitter/X account has been hacked. pic.twitter.com/ZPRYI6GXgK
— Cosmic Marvel (@cosmic_marvel) April 16, 2024
Not the First
While the hackers were unsuccessful in their scheme, this is not the first time bad actors have hijacked celebrities’, important personalities’ and companies’ accounts on X to promote crypto scams in hopes of leveraging their fame and popularity to gain investors’ trust.
Earlier this year in January, hackers exploited Mandiant’s account to promote fake crypto investment opportunities to the public.
The cybersecurity firm owned by Google lost its account to bad actors who posted fraudulent links redirecting users to a phishing page used to host a crypto drainer known as CLINKSINK.
After the incident, which lasted for hours before the firm regained access to their account, Mandiant launched an investigation into the scheme.
During the probe, the company found the hackers used the drainer to siphon around $900,000 in digital assets such as Solana (SOL).
In another high-profile attack last month, hackers took over the account of Activision Blizzard, a popular game developer known for titles like Call of Duty and Diablo. The attackers used the account to promote a meme coin on the Solana ecosystem, falsely presenting it as an official token launch to deceive its followers into investing in the token.
Ethereum Co-founder Loses X Account to Hackers
Last year, hackers targeted Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X account in September.
The malicious actors used the account to post about celebrating the “Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum”. As part of the celebration, the thieves offered “free” NFTs to users. Vitalik’s father Dmitry Buterin later confirmed the hack on X when he warned users to stay away from the malicious tweet while his son tried to regain access to the account.