Crypto scammers hack OpenAI media account on X

OpenAI’s official press account on X appears to have been compromised by the same cryptocurrency fraudsters who did the same to the company’s leadership months ago.

Late Monday afternoon, the OpenAI Newsroom, an account OpenAI recently created to highlight product- and policy-related announcements, posted about OpenAI’s new so-called blockchain token, “$OPENAI.”

“We are very excited to announce $OPEANAI [sic]: the gap between Al and blockchain technology,” the post reads. “All OpenAI users are eligible to claim a share of the first $OPENAI. Holding $OPENAI will provide access to all our future beta programs.”

Of course, $OPENAI doesn’t exist — and the post on X is linked to a phishing site designed to mimic the official OpenAI website (minus the obviously incorrect URL “token-openai.com”). A prominent “CLAIM $OPENAI” button on the fake site encouraged unsuspecting users to link their cryptocurrency wallets, presumably in an attempt to steal those users’ login credentials.

As of press time, both the post and the site were still down — as was a repost and a response promising “more information” about the token “[to] come in a week.” Comments on malicious X posts have been disabled, making the hack less obvious than it might seem.

We’ve reached out to OpenAI and X for comment and will update this article when asked.

This is not the first time accounts associated with OpenAI have been compromised as part of phishing campaigns.

In June 2023, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s account posted a similar message promoting the fictional $OPENAI crypto token. And three months ago, the accounts of OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and OpenAI researcher Jason Wei were hacked and used to publish scam posts similar to the ones posted on the OpenAI Newsroom account today.

Coinspeaker, reporting on the hack of Murati’s account last June, said the fraudsters used a “crypto drainer” tool that would deposit all the NFTs and tokens the victims had in their wallets into the fraudsters’ wallet once they signed into the fake OpenAI site. .

Some of the top X accounts of tech companies and celebrities have been hacked in recent years to promote crypto scams. In perhaps the most infamous example, in 2020, hackers targeted the accounts of Apple, Elon Musk and Joe Biden to send a bitcoin wallet address with the claim that the amount of any payments made to the address would be doubled and refunded.

Americans lost $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, a 45% increase from 2022, according to the FBI. 2024 is about to get worse – or worse. More than 50,000 scams were reported in the first half of this year, costing consumers nearly $2.5 billion, according to the FTC.