The British Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were briefly hijacked and used to post about cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. The army said on Sunday that it had reclaimed control of the accounts and had initiated an inquiry. ‘ Please accept our apologies for the brief delay in our transmission. We will undertake a thorough investigation and learn from this situation,’ the British Army stated on Twitter.
The army’s YouTube channel was renamed ‘Ark Invest,’ and many films on bitcoin were displayed. While the Twitter feed retweeted multiple postings on Non Fungible Tokens — a one-of-a-kind digital item, frequently a piece of virtual art, that may be used as an investment. The Twitter account’s name was also changed to Bapesclan, along with a profile picture of an ape-like cartoon creature wearing clown make-up.
It presently has 362,000 followers on Twitter and 177,000 subscribers on YouTube. It is unclear who is responsible for the hacking attacks, but the army stated that it takes information security ‘very seriously’ and is working to resolve the problem. ‘While we have already remedied the issue, an investigation is continuing and any comment would be improper,’ an army spokeswoman told the BBC.
The chair of the Commons defence select committee, Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, said the incident ‘seems serious’. ‘I hope the findings of the inquiry and measures taken are adequately communicated,’ he wrote in a tweet. Notably, this is not the first time a high-profile Twitter account has been targeted. Major US accounts were stolen in a Bitcoin fraud in July 2020. Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kanye West were among those whose accounts were compromised.
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