Vitalik Buterin Twitter Account Compromised, Hacker Makes Off with 690,000+ Dollars

Crypto News– On a fateful Saturday, Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, fell prey to a Twitter hacker who managed to pilfer a staggering $691,000 from individuals led astray by a malicious link shared on his profile.

Vitalik Buterin Twitter Account Compromised, Hacker Makes Off with 690,000+ Dollars

The breach first came to light when a post surfaced on Buterin’s timeline, announcing the release of commemorative non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by software provider Consensys. This sinister link, potentially exposed to Buterin’s vast following of 4.9 million users, lured victims into connecting their wallets to mint the promised NFTs. In reality, it served as a trap, allowing the hacker to siphon their hard-earned funds.

The crypto community on Twitter swiftly sounded the alarm about the fraudulent link, but the initial acknowledgment of Buterin’s compromised account came from his father, Dmitriy “Dima” Buterin. Although this post has since been removed, the damage was already done, with several victims reporting the loss of access to their wallet funds. Shockingly, within just an hour, the hacker had managed to abscond with over $147,000, a sum that rapidly ballooned to $691,000, as confirmed by blockchain investigator @ZachXBT.

Despite the passing of a day since the hack was first exposed, Buterin has yet to issue any public statements regarding the incident. His most recent post, a retweet from September 6th, remains unrelated to the breach. Interestingly, @ZachZPT reported that the hacker further taunted Buterin by sending a stolen NFT to his account.

The true extent of the hack’s impact remains uncertain, but this recent incident adds to the troubling trend of social media breaches that have netted cybercriminals millions in cryptocurrency tokens.