“We are aware of a breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway,” the Ministry of Defense Press Office said on Twitter. “The Army takes information security extremely seriously and is addressing the issue.” Hackers took over the British Army’s Twitter page, swapping the organization’s profile picture, bio and cover photo to appear linked to The Possessed NFT collection. The account sent various retweets about NFT giveaways and its pinned tweet linked users to a fake NFT mining site. The videos on the British Army YouTube channel have been replaced with old live streams featuring Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey. Bad actors also stripped the British Army’s YouTube channel, deleting all of its videos, as well as changing its name and profile picture to resemble legitimate investment firm Ark Invest. Hackers replaced the British military videos with a series of old live streams featuring former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. These live streams were previously shown as part of The B Word conference held by Ark Invest last June, but the hackers added an overlay that encouraged users to participate in a crypto scam. The channel broadcast four live streams simultaneously, with some of them attracting thousands of viewers. As Web3 Is Going Just Great blogger Molly White points out, the fraudsters who took over British Army accounts carried out their scheme with some of the same tactics used in the recent past. In March, hackers took over the Twitter account belonging to MKLeo, one of the top Super Smash Bros. players. Ultimate in the world, and they used it to peddle fake NFTs that look like they’re connected to The Possessed. Just two months after this incident, fraudsters managed to steal $1.3 million using the same Ark Invest live streams that were reused for this hack. Twitter spokesperson Rocio Vives told The Verge that the British Army’s Twitter account “has since been locked and secured” and that “the account holders have now regained access and the account is back up and running.” Google did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
