A threat actor on Tuesday took over the Twitter account of British retail giant Tesco. What followed was a rather poorly executed cyber scam. Initially the hacker posted a pinned Tweet on the account telling people that if they would send bitcoins to a provided bitcoin address, they would receive twice the money they sent back into their own account.
This type of scam is common, and has worked before in cases were threat actors took over legitimate account and began impersonating famous people in tech such as Elon Musk. However, in this case the attacker initially stuck to the Tesco name. After some time the threat actor did begin to impersonate another account, namely that of Bill Gates, but then the account lost its status as “verified,” which happens after a name change. Many Twitter users posted about the scam as it was unfolding, as result of which no one seems to have fallen for it.
Read more: Tesco Hacked on Twitter Spoofs Bill Gates and Pushes BTC Scam