Crypto scammers hack OpenAI press account on X

OpenAI’s official press account on Platform X was more than likely hijacked by the identical cryptocurrency scammers who did the identical to the corporate’s executives in previous months.

Late Monday afternoon, OpenAI Press OfficeAn account recently created by OpenAI to advertise product and policy announcements posted about OpenAI’s supposedly recent blockchain token, “$OPENAI.”

“We are very pleased to announce $OPEANAI (sic): the gap between AI and blockchain technology,” the post read. “All OpenAI users are eligible to claim a share of the initial supply of $OPENAI. Owning $OPENAI will grant access to all of our future beta programs.”

Of course, $OPENAI doesn’t exist — and the post on X included a link to a phishing page designed to mimic the legitimate OpenAI site (minus the obviously invalid “token-openai.com” URL). A distinguished “CLAIM $OPENAI” button on the fake page encouraged unsuspecting users to attach their crypto wallets, presumably to be able to steal those users’ login credentials.

At the time of publication, each the post and the page were still available — as were a repost and a reply promising “further information” concerning the token “(will) be available later in the week.” Comments on X’s malicious post have been disabled, making the hack less obvious than it’d otherwise have been.

We have reached out to OpenAI and X for comment. We will update this text if we hear back.

This shouldn’t be the primary time that OpenAI-related accounts have fallen victim to a phishing attack.

In June 2023, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s account posted an analogous message promoting the fictional crypto token $OPENAI. And just three months ago, the accounts of OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki and OpenAI Researcher Jason Wei were hacked and used to publish fraudulent posts equivalent to today’s post on the OpenAI Newsroom account.

Coin speaker, Reporting in reference to the hack into Murati’s account last June, he said the scammers used a “cryptocurrency siphoning” tool that redirected all of the NFTs and tokens the victims had of their wallets to the scammers’ wallet after they logged right into a fake OpenAI website.

Other popular X accounts belonging to tech firms and celebrities have been hacked lately to advertise crypto scams. In perhaps essentially the most infamous example, in 2020, hackers targeted accounts belonging to Apple, Elon Musk, and Joe Biden to post a Bitcoin wallet address with the claim that any payments made to the address can be doubled and sent back.

Americans lost $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, up 45% from 2022 According to to the FBI. 2024 is on track to be just as bad — or worse. More than 50,000 scams were reported in the primary half of this 12 months, costing consumers nearly $2.5 billion, for FTC (Frankfurt Trade Commission)