The X account of Vitalik Buterin was hacked, and over $691K was taken from victims’ wallets
Victims allegedly lost more than $691,000 due to a malicious link fraudulently promising a free NFT following the compromise of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X (previously Twitter) account.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X (previously Twitter) account was allegedly hijacked. According to famed blockchain investigator ZachXBT, the incident cost victims over $691,000 when they clicked on a bogus link.
Dmitry Buterin, Vitalik’s father, declared on X on September 9 that his son’s account had been hacked: “Disregard this post, apparently Vitalik has been hacked.” He is striving to reestablish access.” The post to which he was referring has subsequently been removed. It was posted on Buterin’s account, proclaiming the arrival of “Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum.”
The hacker distributed a bogus link to a supposed free commemorative nonfungible token (NFT), luring victims into connecting their wallets before taking all of their assets. As a result of this occurrence, Ethereum developer Bok Khoo, also known as Bokky Poobah on X, has claimed that he has incurred losses in his CryptoPunk NFT collection.
The current floor price for a CryptoPunk NFT is 46.99 at the time of posting. Ether ZachXBT has been keeping his 438,200 followers up to date on the hacker’s activities. He recently revealed that the most valuable NFT stolen is CryptoPunk #3983, which is worth 153.62 ETH, or around $250,543.
On X, a user known as Satoshi 767 argued that Buterin may not have established adequate security measures for his X account. “I hate to be the one to say it, but Vitalik should accept responsibility for his poor op-sec and compensate those affected,” he said, before insinuating that Buterin’s negligence was to blame for the attack: “I hate to be the one to say it, but Vitalik should take accountability for his poor op-sec and compensate those affected.”
The only way this isn’t Vitalik’s fault is if someone at X corrupted the account internally, or if he was persuaded in person by a criminal who threatened harm. That is highly unlikely to be the case. This was most likely a SIM swap. However, ZachXBT refuted these claims, claiming that Buterin’s high profile makes him vulnerable to numerous types of hacking attempts: “You don’t know yet whether it was a SIM swap.” “Vitalik is a big enough target that an insider or a panel could have been used,” ZachXBT explained.
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