"New York Post X Account Hackers Target Crypto Users"

Hackers exploit New York Post’s X account in scam DMs, users report

Malicious actors have reportedly hacked into the New York Post’s X account in an attempt to scam crypto users on the microblogging platform. Several users from the crypto community have recently come forward stating that they received private messages from the New York Post’s X account, inviting them to feature in a podcast and instructing them to contact via Telegram.

The fake messages were initially discovered on May 3 by Alex Katz, the founder and CEO of Kerberus, who shared a screenshot of a message pretending to be from author and journalist Paul Sperry via the nypost account.

One cybersecurity engineer and NFT collector known as “Drew” noted, “What's interesting about this case is that the scammer gained unauthorized access but didn’t insert a Pump.fun address or wallet drainer. Instead, they’re messaging users and guiding them to Telegram.”

Once the message is sent, the scammer blocks users from responding to avoid raising suspicions from the actual New York Post team about the breach, he added.

Donny Clutterbuck from Fomojis, a platform under NFT Bitcoin’s ordinals, also revealed being contacted by the hacker, speculating that it might be an exploit related to Zoom that enables audio.

ZachXBT, a blockchain sleuth, highlighted that this compromise resembled a previous incident a few weeks ago when direct messages were sent from The Defiant’s X account.

Scammers targeting victims on Zoom

Scammers have been shifting their social engineering tactics to directly messaging users after gaining trust from previous interactions, with video conferencing platform Zoom recently becoming a hub for crypto scams.

In April, Jake Gallen, CEO of Emblem Vault, cautioned users to be cautious of malicious actors utilizing Zoom after losing $100,000 in crypto assets. Gallen was also contacted via X for a Zoom interview during which the scammer installed malware that siphoned funds from his wallets.

This is not the first time the New York Post’s verified Twitter account has been compromised. In 2022, an employee breached the account to post a series of explicit messages disguised as real headlines.

For further details on the social media incident, Cointelegraph reached out to the New York Post but did not receive an immediate response. There was no mention of the breach on the NYP or Sperry’s X feeds.