Scam token ‘OpenAI’ promoted on OpenAI CTO’s Twitter account

The Twitter account belonging to OpenAI CTO Mira Murati was hacked on Thursday, and was allegedly used to promote a scam crypto token backed by the company.

The tweet remained online for about an hour, garnering 80,000 views from platform users before being removed.

Another scam AI Token

The hacker promoted a bogus airdrop for the ‘OpenAI’ token, which is described as a “groundbreaking token powered by an artificial intelligence-based language model”.

Meera Murati (CTO at @OpenAI) account has been hacked and is being used to promote crypto scams. Tweet is getting 1k+ impressions per minute. pic.twitter.com/VekeRV1xDT

— Max RDLB (@maxrdlb) June 2, 2023

The tweet provided a link to a well-edited phishing website that appeared to be a direct copy of the original project called changept – AI chatbot for crypto and blockchain information.

However, the copied version included some minor changes – such as a prompt asking visitors to connect their crypto wallet. Reports suggest that the site lured investors with requests to sign transactions, with which the hacker could transfer NFTs and ERC-20 tokens from the victim’s wallet.

The fake tweet from Murati’s account used restricted replies, making it even more difficult for followers to warn readers that the post was fake. Although it has now been removed, Murati hasn’t issued a clear statement from his account.

According to scam sniffer, the hack was done by a repeat offender in an art form of phishing scams called “Pink Drainer”. Earning $110,000 from this particular hack, the scammers have extorted $1.8 million from more than 500 victims since May 30.

Twitter-Based Crypto Scams

Crypto Twitter is notorious for phishing scams using spam bots, which often clog reply sections for notable industry influencers. Elon Musk promised to partially solve the issue through Twitter’s new verification program.

Many such scams work by impersonating high-profile personalities. One of the most famous scams occurred in July 2020, when over 130 prominent accounts including Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and others were hacked. chopped offInviting users to send BTC to a certain address, and promising a 2:1 return.

Social media scams like this have worked before: A fake Michael Saylor phishing scams On-chain data shows that in January 2022, over $1.1 million was raised from the victim.

“We report them every 15 minutes and they are taken down after a few hours, but the scammers just launch more,” Saylor said at the time.