Vitalik Buterin's X Account Hacked By SIM-swap Attack

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin regained control of his X account and talked about how it happened. It was a SIM swap attack. Criminal actors did social engineering and manipulated T-Mobile to gain control of his phone number. Then scammers got access to his X account and promoted phishing links.

Vitalik got control of the T-Mobile account first to recover his X account. You do not use your phone number for 2FA. Still, hackers can reset your password to get access to your X account if your phone number is linked to the account.

Ethereum developer Tim Beiko advised users to remove their phone numbers from their X account. And it is highly recommended to add 2FA. High-profile crypto individuals become hackers' prime targets. You will never know when someone's X account will be compromised.

Maybe you interact with a tweet that comes from hackers. You do not realize that until it becomes too late. In the phishing attack using Vitalik Buterin's X Account, criminal actors managed to steal more than $691,000. When a tweet comes from a high-profile individual, people tend to believe that blindly.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, CZ tweeted about this incident. He highly recommends using common sense when it comes to reading any content on social media. You cannot trust even high-profile individuals' tweets blindly. When you use common sense, you will figure out something is off. CZ shared his experience on X when hackers tried different passwords to get access to his Twitter account.

The platform security should be strong to prevent scammers' attacks. People may not feel comfortable using the platform and trusting the content if hackers keep hacking high-profile individuals' accounts to promote scams. The list of compromised X accounts is long including Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, Sandbox CEO Arthur Madrid, and media commentator Peter Schiff.

Twitter has rebranded as X. And if this platform intends to be an everything app where people do financial transactions, I don't know how many people trust it due to rising scams and phishing attacks. You want to ensure the security of your account first before doing any financial transactions. Otherwise, you will feel uncomfortable using your account to do any financial transactions.

What you can do is tighten the security, use strong passwords, not use your phone number as 2FA, and watch out for your activity on social media so that it does not become too easy to do social engineering. How did you react after hearing the news of hacking Vitalik Buterin's X account? At least you did not expect that. I do not see any alternative to staying vigilant to survive and grow in crypto.

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