Vitalik Buterin, gondola head in spite of himself of a crypto heist

Even Vitalik Buterin can get hacked. But when the “prince of crypto” loses control of his X account (ex-Twitter), the consequences can be very serious. Despite the numerous warnings from Internet users, the attack he suffered this weekend was indeed very lucrative. His loot is currently estimated at the equivalent of $ 691,000 by crypto investigator ZachXBT.

Because this hack has obviously been well thought out. It all started with a tweet from the official Facebook account of Vitalik Buterin, this Canadian of Russian origin who revolutionized crypto by being at the origin of the Ethereum protocol. In this message sent on the evening of September 9, the idealistic crypto geek explains that NTFS, free during the first day, will celebrate one of the last Ethereum updates.

Not her style

“Ask for your part of the story”” he concludes by sharing a link to Consensys.io , the specialized company supposed to house NFTs. Many Internet users sound the alarm very quickly. This message is really not the style of the father of Ethereum. “Ignore this message, Vitalik has apparently been hacked,” his father writes thus. He is working to restore his access ”to his X account.”

Unfortunately it is already too late. Internet users have already clicked on the link, which actually links to a phishing site. A page that was designed to suck the contents of the wallets of visitors, to the undetermined number. The hackers have thus amassed a tidy sum in crypto. But also NFTs, including one worth 153 ethers (about $ 250,000), immediately sold on marketplaces.

Sim-swapping?

It is currently unknown how Vitalik Buterin’s account was hacked. The latter did not return to this story, which recalls the spectacular hacks of accounts on Twitter of celebrities in July 2020. However, several observers have hypothesized an attack by sim-swapping, this social engineering technique where the attacker takes control of a mobile phone number by pretending, for example, a problem with his sim card with the mobile operator.

Anyway, the question of the security of X users was raised by Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the Binance crypto exchange platform. The security of X’s accounts “needs more features”, he noted, before citing double-factor authentication, the implementation of a login ID different from the username and email.