Scam Alert | Cricket South Africa Official Twitter Hacked To Promote Bitcoin Lottery

By Prashant Jha

ICC, the world cricket body, has acknowledged the hacking of Cricket South Africa Official Twitter handle and asked the users not to engage with the handle unless it has been restored. The hackers behind the deed used the handle to promote a scam of Bitcoin lottery.

The Twitter handle of South African Cricket Board(OfficialCSA) was hacked to promote various Bitcoin-related scam. It all started at around 4:20 AM IST on Monday when the first tweet came in. The tweet read,

“@OfficialCSA is partnering with @lunomoney for the first South African Bitcoin Lottery. Simply send 0,01 BTC to 13My18T92DCzGdrtiCgRuS32T6rFLjnG56 and your BTC Wallet Address will be entered into a BTC Lottery for 20 BTC (That’s Over R1Mil). Lottery closes at 15 Jan @ 10 PM.”

The first tweet was followed by couple more around the same topic, and the issue finally ended with Cricket South Africa regaining its twitter handle at around 11:23 AM IST. 

ICC, the parent world cricket body came out with an acknowledgement of the hack and asked the users to refrain from engaging in any activity with the hacked twitter handle, unless further notice. The ICC tweeted from its official handle,

“Please be aware that the @OfficialCSA Twitter account has been compromised. Our friends in South Africa are working hard to resolve the situation quickly. Please do not click on any links or engage with the account until such time as this is rectified,”

The number of Twitter-Based Crypto Scam on the Rise

The latest hacking of Cricket South Africa’s official twitter handle marks the first such attempt in 2019. The number of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency related scams are on the rise, especially on Twitter.

BTC Wires reported various instances of such nuisances throughout the last year, some of the most prominent ones include hacking of

1. Google G-Suite Twitter Handle Hacked
2. Someone impersonating Elon Musk to promote the crypto scam
3. Target Facebook Ads duping people in the name of crypto.

Apart from the Twitter handles, scammers have also opted for malware based scams where they insert malware into the user’s browser without their consent. The malware tracks the activities of the users and also use their computational power for their mining profits.

The biggest issue with crypto scams is that they are getting sophisticated every day. Be it in the case of Elon Musk impersonator, who hacked an official account, renamed it and made it look like Elon Musk’s twitter handle and asked people to put in their money, which many did.

What’s the Solution?

Well, public awareness is the first important step, where people should always look for obvious red flags, to avoid being duped. Always remember that nothing in this world comes for free and if something looks too good to be true, chances are it’s a scam.

Make sure to check the twitter activity of recent past and see if anything is off or out of the blue, these scammers impersonate the name and official tag, because the generation today suffer from making a few extra clicks to check the authenticity.