Twitter X Scams Surface on YouTube with the Microblogging Site Renamed to X

Looks like Twitter X scam has taken the space of blue tick sale!

Elon Musk is busy changing the logo of Twitter from the blue bird to the letter ‘X’ while scammers were found taking this as an opportunity for duping people.

Twitter X scams involve hacking the YouTube channels of famous influencers and posting fraudulent content on their platform.

Twitter X scams and Twitter fund frauds on YouTube

McAfee researchers noted that such scams have been in the news for long.

“To make this scam more authentic, attackers target famous Influencers with sponsorship emails that contain password-stealing malware as email attachments,” said the McAfee report on the scam.

When password stealer malware is executed, the influencer’s session cookies (unique access tokens) are stolen and uploaded to attacker-controlled systems.

They usually target accounts with marks similar to blue ticks or verified accounts to look legitimate. They get caught in scams out of curiosity to know what’s new or while trying to help through donation requests.

Targeting famous influencers in Twitter X scams

It was found that famous YouTube personalities and influencers were sent emails with infected attachments. These emails were composed to appear like sponsorship requests however contained malicious attachments that could steal their passwords.

The malicious attachments when clicked could access the session cookies and send the same to scammers. The scammers would then change the YouTube channel name to ‘Twitter CEO’ or the likes to post fraudulent live streams of Elon Musk.

It was found that scammers targeted famous YouTubers with a larger following with Twitter X scams so they could dupe more individuals with one hacked account.

Compromised accounts are also used to post videos for software/game applications, which are malware masquerading as legitimate software or games,” said the report.

“These videos demonstrate how to download and execute files, which are common password-stealing malware, and distributed through compromised social media accounts.”

Twitter X scams on Instagram and Twitter

To conduct Twitter X scams and similar frauds on Instagram and Twitter, hacked accounts were used by scammers so they could follow other users. They were found posting screenshots with captions including, ‘Thanks Mr. Elon.’

Compromised accounts on social media platforms were also used to make fraudulent posts and videos of games and other applications infected with malware.

The following heatmaps showed the regions that were most affected by the Twitter X scams and similar crypto scams –

The below heatmap showed where password stealers were found the most –

The indicators of compromise noted by McAfee were as follows –

1. Scam site – twitter-x[.]org, crypto type – ETH, and wallet – 0xB1706fc3671115432eC9a997F802aC79CD7f378a
2. Scam site – twitter-x[.]org, crypto type – BTC, and wallet –1KtgaAjBETdcXiAdGsXJMePT4AEGWqtsug             
3. Scam site – twitter-x[.]org, crypto type – USDT, and wallet – 0xB1706fc3671115432eC9a997F802aC79CD7f378a
4. Scam site – twitter-x[.]org, crypto type – DOGE, and wallet – DLCmD43eZ6hPxZVzc8C7eUL4w8TNrBMw9J

Twitter rebranding

“I don’t like the thicker bars, so reverting. The logo will evolve over time,” Elon Musk tweeted on July 26, 2023 suggesting that the changed Twitter logo was not something he was yet satisfied with.

Elon wrote that the Twitter name seemed right when the messages were limited to 140 characters ‘going back and forth like birds tweeting.’

But now, the SpaceX CEO further added that users can post anything.

Elon seems to have a special sentiment attached to the letter X as it reflects in the name of SpaceX, Twitter acquired by X Corp, X.com being among Elon’s first few startups, and the changing his son’s name to X Æ A-XII’s.