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On Monday evening, one of OpenAI's official accounts on X-formerly-Twitter was taken over by crypto scammers, who used the opportunity to peddle a fake token called "$OPENAI."
"We're very happy to announce $OPEANAI: the token bridging the gap between Al and blockchain technology," said a now-deleted tweet on the OpenAI Newsroom account, which has over 54,000 followers.
"All OpenAI users are eligible to claim a piece of $OPENAI's initial supply," it continued. "Holding $OPENAI will grant access to all of our future beta programs."
The post included a link to a phishing site designed to look like OpenAI's, according to TechCrunch, where unwitting users are directed to click a big "CLAIM $OPENAI" button that opens a menu to connect a crypto wallet.
And as these scams tend to go, this would almost certainly be used to plunder whatever funds the wallet contained.
Response Lacking
Before we proceed: do not buy any crypto purported to be a collaboration with OpenAI, because it's not involved with any such projects.
The company acknowledged it was aware of the breach and that it was looking into it, according to Bloomberg, which is about the extent of what it's said on the matter so far. It's unclear how many people were tricked by the scam.
While the posts were deleted after an hour, the bogus website is still up — though it's now been flagged with a "suspected phishing" warning page if you visit it.
Since the hack, no statements or follow-up tweets have been made on the Newsroom account, which was created in June and only became actively used this month. Didn't take long for it to fall, huh?
Poor Defenses
Luckily, it wasn't OpenAI's primary account, which has over three million followers, that was compromised. Otherwise, the damage could've been much worse.
Still, this is the fifth hack of an OpenAI-affiliated account in about two years, Cointelegraph notes, which either means that the startup has a nagging cybersecurity issue that needs addressing, or that it's the target of an outsized number of attacks, or both.
Four of these breaches were used to shill the same fake $OPENAI token, including the Twitter accounts of the AI company's chief technology officer Mira Murati, which was hacked in June last year, and more recently the account of chief scientist Jakub Pachocki just a few months ago.
The company suffered its most major breach last year, when a hacker broke into a private forum used by OpenAI's employees to discuss company secrets.
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