OPENAI’S SECURITY NIGHTMARE: THE DARK SIDE OF AI
In a devastating blow to the integrity of OpenAI’s online presence, their official press account on X was hijacked by a group of shadowy cryptocurrency scammers who exploited the platform’s naive users.
The hack happened on Monday afternoon, when the OpenAI Newsroom account, which was meant to provide updates on products and policies, posted an announcement about a new "OpenAI-branded" blockchain token called $OPENAI. The post included a tantalizing promise that all OpenAI users were eligible to claim a share of the token’s initial supply, and that holding it would grant access to future beta programs.
However, what followed was nothing short of a phishing racket. The post linked to a fake OpenAI site that looked eerily similar to the real thing. The site’s "Claim $OPENAI" button encouraged unsuspecting users to connect their cryptocurrency wallets, which would likely have handed over their login credentials and potentially led to a heist of epic proportions.
As of this writing, the post and site remained active, with comments on the malicious post disabled. It’s a chilling thought that this hack could go unnoticed, leaving OpenAI’s users vulnerable to manipulation.
But this is hardly the first time OpenAI’s accounts have been targeted by scammers. The company’s CTO Mira Murati’s Twitter account was hacked in June 2023, spewing out a similar promotion for the fictional $OPENAI token. And in a brazen move just three months ago, the accounts of OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and researcher Jason Wei were compromised, distributing identical scam posts.
Coinspeaker reported that the Murati hack used a "crypto drainer" tool that would siphon off all the NFTs and tokens from victim wallets, sending them directly to the scammers.
This latest hack is merely the latest in a disturbing trend of high-profile hacks targeting X accounts belonging to tech companies and celebrities to promote crypto scams.
