Were you frantically searching the Bitcoin address that was being used to scam Twitter users on Wednesday? You know, the one that all those hacked verified accounts — from Barack Obama to Elon Musk — were tweeting out?
bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh. That one.
Well, while you were following along to see who would be the next big, verified Twitter user to get their account compromised, one person went to a domain registrar and registered the nice, simple, catchy domain name: bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh.com.
Not only did they register the domain, they built a quick website, too. Don’t worry, though. It’s not part of the scam to get followers of dozens of verified Twitter users to send the hacker(s) Bitcoin. You can go to the address and see for yourself: It’s a PSA warning visitors not to fall for the fraud.
“Don’t fall for it!” reads the title of the site.
“Don’t send any Bitcoin to this address!” the website continues. “Many popular Twitter accounts have been hacked, trying to convince people to send their Bitcoin to the address bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh. Don’t do it! This is a scam, you will not get Bitcoin back. Never send Bitcoin to addresses you don’t trust. Be safe out there!”
Just registered the domain https://t.co/lZOk2gbIFw, with the Bitcoin address shared from the ongoing Twitter hack. I'm putting up information about this scam to help people who may not know what they're doing. If you have any suggestions for content, please let me know!
— bdn (@example_dev) July 15, 2020
The domain was registered with domain registrar Pornbun. Whois privacy is turned on for the domain, so we don’t know the identity of who registered it. However, we do know the Twitter user associated with the account — @example_dev — as he posted a link to his handle on his brand new PSA website.
The user who registered the account says he is a web developer and privacy advocate in his Twitter bio. He also added a link to a public analytics website which shows how many people have already visited bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh.com.
So far, the site has racked up around 3,000 page views (and counting). Not bad for a short, catchy, 42-character, dot-com domain that was just registered no more than an hour ago.
Source: (https://mashable.com/)