Crypto Scammers Flock to Exploit Verified Twitter Handles Following Merge Arrival

It has been 24 hours since the Ethereum blockchain historically went green with the arrival of its eco-friendly upgrade, called the Merge. The excitement around this launch has however, been mixed with scam threats looming large over unsuspecting Ethereum enthusiasts, exposing them to financial risks. Scammers seem to be fishing for access information of verified Twitter accounts just to later the account names to Ethereum co-founder’s name, Vitalik Buterin. Later they have been using these hacked verified accounts to post about fake giveaways to try and lure-in potential victims into their vicious scam webs.

Recently, the verified handle of India’s Go First airline was compromised byvitalik-buterin) unidentified hackers, who changed the name of the handle to Vitalik Buterin was giving away 100,000 Ether coins on a first-come-first-serve basis.

A potentially malicious link was also shared by Go First, founded as Indian ultra-low-cost airline GoAir based in Mumbai, Maharashtra and owned by the Wadia Group.

The scam was quickly noticed by Twitter users, who posted screenshots and attempted at stirring awareness.

In the last few days, screenshots of similar Ether giveaway posts from verified accounts named after Buterin surfaced on Twitter, amplifying the alerts around these potential crypto scams.

The hackers have also been changing the profile pictures of the compromised accounts to resemble that of Buterin’s.

Members of the crypto community are urging each other to check the usernames of all handles reflecting the name and picture of the Ethereum co-founder to identify fake ones and report them.

Essentially, now the Ethereum blockchain has transitioned to an energy-efficient ‘proof-of-stake (POS)’ mining model from its previous, power intensive ‘proof-of-work (POW)’ mining model. This upgrade has slashed Ethereum blockchain’s power consumption by 99.95 percent.