The management received transactions for almost USD 18,000. The person responsible for maintaining the website clarified they would investigate how the hackers managed to breach security.
The page Bitcoin.org received an attack. The attacker, who has remained unidentified, signed his message as “Bitcoin Foundation.” Supposedly this entity would thus reward cryptocurrency users for their support for so many years.
The Bitcoin (BTC) address that appeared in a pop-up of the website under attack shows various transactions. Some of them are from coins received, for a total of 0.4 BTC. The rest of the transaction is a shipment to two other addresses.
The banner published by the scammer offered the possibility of sending an amount of the victim’s choice or, by pressing certain buttons, the equivalent of USD 10, USD 100, USD 1,000, or USD 10,000.
The transactions received correspond to shipments of USD 10 or USD 100 in BTC, which suggests (although it is something without verification) that they are people who have fallen into the trap. The first transaction marked USD 17,000.
The developer known as Cøbra, who is currently responsible for maintaining the website that Satoshi Nakamoto registered in 2018, said they would investigate how cybercriminals managed to breach the security of bitcoin.org. It may be unavailable for various days, he said.
The files that can get downloaded from bitcoin.org did not fall into the attack. Among these files is the Bitcoin Core client. Users interested in downloading the files can verify the authenticity of the PGP keys. These PGP keys are digital signatures that allow users to know that a file has not been modified or replaced by another.
Bitcoin.org is one of the pioneers regarding cryptocurrencies reference sites. Inside the same website, there is warning advice stating that bitcoin.org is not an official page.
Scammers Are Everywhere
Scams like the ones reported here are now usual criminal activities. In July 2020, dozens of Twitter accounts of companies and world-renowned personalities got hacked to promote a fraud of these characteristics.
On the other hand, Binance accounts, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Wiz Khalifa, Joe Biden, Uber, and Apple, among others, simultaneously published a message inviting people to deposit their BTC in one address, with the promise that double would get returned for them.
The main person responsible for the crime got discovered quickly. The hacker is an American called Graham Ivan Clark, who was 17 years old. In March of this year, he received a sentence of 3 years in prison and has a lifetime restriction to use computers without permission from the authorities.
In conclusion, it is worth remembering this advice that can save many BTC: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not true; Users have to learn how to trust the community and identify these types of scams.
By: Jenson Nuñez
