May 2024 - Near Protocol Twitter Hack Publicity Stunt - $0k (Global)
"ALERT It seems that @NEARProtocol's X account has been compromised!"
"The official Twitter account of the public chain project NEAR Protocol appears to have been compromised. Currently, its profile picture on Twitter has been changed to a solid black image, and its bio has been updated to display the word "Dark" with garbled characters. Around 4 AM, several strange tweets with garbled characters were posted, including "re claim your sovereig nty," "darkness," "take back your," and "The sun rises in the east." As of now, NEAR has not provided any explanation on its other official social media channels."
Further Analysis
Near Protocol came up with a very clever marketing strategy of changing their Twitter cover photo and profile photo to all black, and releasing cryptic messages to their community. Multiple sources came to the belief that the Twitter account had been hacked, althrough there is no basis to support that the account was ever hacked, and the Near Protocol posted a message with similar text.
How Could This Have Been Prevented?
More Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacks/Scams/Frauds
Bloom On Blast Update Margin Vulnerability > > < < GPU Token Transfer Vulnerability
Sources/Further Reading
SlowMist Hacked - SlowMist Zone (Dec 31)
NEAR官方X账号疑似被黑，发布带有乱码字符的奇怪推文 - PANews (Dec 31)
@NEARProtocol Twitter (Dec 31)
@CryptoSammy19 Twitter (Dec 31)
@CyversAlerts Twitter (Dec 31)
@advaitjayant Twitter (Dec 31)
@nearprotocol Twitter (Dec 31)
@IceBearResearch Twitter (Dec 31)
@NEARProtocol Twitter (Dec 31)
@kvikash007 Twitter (Dec 31)
Self-Sovereignty Is NEAR: A Vision for Our Ecosystem – NEAR Protocol (Dec 31)
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