Another hacked Twitter account, a hacker took over Robinhood’s account and promoted an illicit token

A group of cybercriminals hacked the Twitter account of U.S.-based securities brokerage Robinhood to promote fraudulent RBH tokens on the Binance Smart Chain through the decentralized exchange PancakeSwap.

The hack was reported yesterday when several of the 1.1 million followers of the Robinhood account on Twitter said they were offered to buy fraudulent RBH tokens for up to $0.0005 each. Before the tweet promoting the fraudulent token was deleted, 10 users fell for the offer and spent nearly $1,000 on RBH.

Looks like Robinhood account got hacked and was promoting a coin on BNB Chain. Always have critical thinking even is the account looks or is real. https://t.co/XSwHIVdEdw

CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) January 25, 2023

Notably, other Robinhood social media accounts were also compromised. The wallet linked to the receipt of the scam money was hosted on the Binance exchange. According to an analysis of the Binance Smart Chain shared by Internet detective ZackXBT, the hackers were able to grab 26.95 BNB tokens, or about $8,200.

Robinhood commented:

“We are aware of the unauthorized posts on Robinhood’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook profiles, all of which were deleted within minutes. At this time, based on our ongoing investigation, we believe the source of the incident was via a third-party provider.”

Immediately after the alert, Binance also locked Robinhood’s account. Further investigations are to follow.

Twitter scams on the rise

The number of scams on social media, especially on Twitter, is increasing. Twitter is one of the most popular social networks in the world. Do you remember in 2020 when a 17-year-old boy hacked the Twitter accounts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden using a rather simple social engineering technique? At the time, we reported that other high-profile individuals and companies had also fallen victim to a major bitcoin (BTC) scam. These include Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, former U.S. President Barack Obama and Kanye West. It turned out that the attack earned the Twitter hackers as much as $121,000 in bitcoins.

In 2022, the crooks took note of Elon Musk’s initiative to launch Twitter Blue, a paid monthly subscription that adds a blue check mark to a user’s account. The potential for bad actors here is huge. Since Twitter Blue gives users the ability to actually purchase a verified Twitter account, it can be used for phishing attacks, cryptocurrency scams and malware distribution. It can also easily lead to the spread of fake news.

According to some reports, there are about 20 million fake Twitter accounts today, which represent about 4% of the 500 million registered Twitter accounts. Twitter can be a great source of information and entertainment, but it is not perfect when it comes to privacy and security. To protect your account, there are a few things you can do. These include using a strong password, implementing two-factor authentication, managing third-party app permissions, and more. It’s also important to pay attention to who you follow.