Twitter and YouTube accounts of the British Army were hacked to promote bitcoin schemes.
The Army has acknowledged the breach and is looking into it.
The British Army's YouTube and Twitter accounts were compromised, the Army said on Sunday. Now, an investigation is in progress.
“The hackers, whose identities are still unknown, took control of the army's Twitter and YouTube accounts on Sunday. The profile and header images of the Twitter account were changed to mimic a nonfungible token collection dubbed "The Possessed," and the account's name was changed to pssssd. ”
The official Twitter account for The Possessed alerted followers to a "new verified SCAM account" imitating the group of NFTs, the tokens that signify ownership of online material.
The account's banner image was changed to a cartoon ape wearing clown makeup earlier on Sunday, and the name of the account was changed to "Bapesclan," the name of another NFT collection. The hacker started retweeting tweets that promoted NFT giveaway schemes as well.
Meanwhile, the name of the U.K. military's YouTube account was changed to "Ark Invest," the company Cathie Wood, a Tesla and bitcoin bull, runs.
The hacker deleted all the account’s videos and replaced with them with livestreams of old clips taken from a conversation with Elon Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on bitcoin that was hosted by Ark in July 2021. Text was added to the livestreams directing users to crypto scam websites.
“The breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts that occurred earlier today has been resolved and an investigation is underway,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense tweeted Monday.
Since the Army takes information security very seriously, further comment is not appropriate until their investigation is finished.
The British Army's account "was compromised and has since been shut and secured," according to a Twitter representative.