Hackers Switch Twitter of Belgian Non-Profit Into Fake Coinbase Promo Account

The Twitter account of a non-profit was evidently hacked and made into a fake affiliate account of United States crypto exchange Coinbase. The impersonating account posted exactly what seemed like a scam giveaway advertising, allegedly celebrating Coinbase’s consumer base expansion at a tweet now, Jan. 9, which has been deleted.

Screenshot of the FEB’s Twitter account at press time, Jan. 9

At that time, the FEB hasn’t replied to Cointelegraph’therefore petition for comment.

By press time, Coinbase branding was removed from the Twitter account, though retweets out of Coinbase’s account still stay in the accounts ’s feed.

Released at Thu, 10 Jan 2019 02:00:00 +0000
Screenshot of imitation Coinbase tweet promoting a scam giveaway

Crypto-related giveaway scams on Twitter frequently involve scammers impersonating major industry titles, including Charlie Lee or even Elon Musk, subtly altering characters from your first accounts ’s title to mislead users.
The natives were not able to modify the Twitter accounts ’s manage, which remained @VBOFEB, a blend of the abbreviations of their organization’s title in Dutch and French.

The scam giveaway tweet submitted now mimics a frequent crypto scam version on Twitter, urging followers to ship a small amount of crypto to be able to get a bigger amount. The natives ’ converse urged users to participate in a deceptive 3,000 BTC giveaway, allegedly in honour of Coinbase’s consumer base expansion to “over 30,000.000 [sic] users. ”

In October, Ran Neuner, the host of CNBC’s Crypto Trader, revealed that the number of Coinbase consumer accounts had reached 25 million by that time, using 600,000 user actively trading on the platform.

After taking charge of the FEB’s Twitter account, the natives transformed the account to appear to be affiliated with Coinbase. The accounts ’s description read “Official Coinbase Promotion Account,” and its own profile and cover photos featured Coinbase branding, as well as a URL to Coinbase’s official Website.  

Scammers had targeted that the account of the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB), a nonprofit organization that intends to promote the interests of Belgian businesses.
Along with the Twitter accounts ’s manage, other signs that the giveaway accounts and tweet were a scam included inconsistent number grammatical and grammatical errors. Coinbase’s user base, according to the tweet, ” “30,000.000,” or thirty million, although the giveaway announcement read“We giving [sic] off 3 000 BTC. ”

Screenshot from your FEB’s hacked Twitter account using a Coinbase promotion account, Jan. 9