Former Pakistani prime minister and current head of one of the biggest political parties in the nation, Imran Khan, has acknowledged that hackers gained access to his Instagram account and exploited it to spread a bitcoin giveaway fraud.
Scams involving cryptocurrency giveaways are quite prevalent on well-known social media sites like Twitter and YouTube. Numerous them include well-known individuals and organisations, like Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Tim Cook, Steve Wozniak, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. They occasionally include CEOs from cryptocurrency businesses, such as Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase.
Imran told a magazine that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, helped him quickly regain his account. He mentioned that the hackers sent a cryptocurrency link and a screenshot of a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to the account, which has 7.4 million followers, and said that he himself keeps an eye on it.
The politician’s account provided a cryptocurrency giveaway link that takes users to a website where Elon Musk and his company Spacex are featured. Scammers claim to be giving free litecoin, dogecoin, ether, and bitcoin.
Wozniak filed a lawsuit against Google and Youtube in July 2020 for exploiting his name and image to promote schemes involving bitcoin giveaways. He ultimately dropped the case, though. The judge in the case concluded that the federal provision exempting internet platforms from liability for user-posted information protects YouTube and its parent company, Google.
In July, hackers gained access to the British Army’s official Twitter and YouTube accounts, using them to spread their cryptocurrency schemes.