Ethereum creator's account on X is hacked, damage is $700,000

The X—formerly Twitter—account of Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin was hacked. Hackers made a post on X on his behalf, and proposed to people to follow a phishing link to allegedly receive free NFTs in connection with the launch of a new feature to increase transactions on Ethereum.

Vitalik’s father, Dmitry Buterin, later cautioned of this hack and said his son was working to regain access to his account. The aforesaid post with the phishing link was soon deleted, but the damage caused by this hacking attack so far is almost $700,000.

Before the hackers’ post on Vitalik Buterin's account on X was deleted, some users had already reacted to this scam and accessed their crypto wallets through a phishing link, which resulted in a considerable loss of funds; analysts estimated the total damage at $691,000. 

Among the stolen NFTs were two CryptoPunk—collector tokens on the Ethereum blockchain—valued at approximately 153.62 Ethereum ($250,000) and 58.18 Ethereum ($95,000), respectively. According to experts, not only the financial loss is important, but also the threat to the security of data and assets.

In order to avoid such incidents, Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder and CEO of Binance cryptocurrency exchange, gave several recommendations. First, he advises to use "common sense when reading content on social media, even from large KOLs," as "Twitter's account security is not designed as financial platforms."

Also, he urges the use of two-factor authentication (2FA) and reminds that the login identification should be different from handle or Email address. In addition, Zhao said that in the past, even before the "Elon era," his Twitter account was blocked several times due to hacker attempts.