The official BNB Chain account on X has reportedly been hacked by an unnamed party. The team is currently working on getting access back into the account as it keeps dropping airdrop posts.
Summary
- BNB Chain’s official X account was hacked on Oct. 1, with attackers using it to promote a fake BNB airdrop website.
- Experts suggest the hack may have stemmed from a social engineering or third-party app issue, sparking criticism of X’s security.
On Oct. 1, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao alerted users of that the BNB Chain X account has been compromised. In the past few hours, the hacker has been posting links for users to participate in a large scale airdrop for BNB holders. According to CZ, the security team is currently working to get the hacked account suspended.
“Security teams have notified X already, working to suspend the account first, then restore access. Also take-down requests to take down all phishing websites. Always check the domains very carefully, even from official X handles,” he wrote in his latest post.
The Chinese language account for BNB (BNB) also informed users that the English X account has been hacked by an unidentified party. So far, the hacker has been using it to spread links to a fake website masquerading as Binance.
“Currently, the English official Twitter account of @BNBCHAIN has been [hacked]. We are urgently working on a fix. Please do not click on any links!” wrote the Chinese language account in a translated post.
Based on crypto.news’ observation, the compromised BNB Chain X account has been spreading information about a HODLer airdrop event with links attached to each post. The hacker seems to be promoting an airdrop event by posting repeated links to a fake website that claims to be “bnbchain.org.”
Users are expected to exercise caution and ignore these links spread by the hacker online. Some users under CZ’s comments section are already asking if there will be compensation or support for victims who have accidentally connected their wallet.
Amidst the social media account hack, the BNB token dipped slightly by 0.95% in the past 24 hours as it edged dangerously close to falling below the $1,000 threshold.
How did BNB Chain’s social media get hacked?
So far, the Binance team has yet to release an official statement regarding the hack or how it happened. Based on posts from CZ and the Chinese BNB Chain account, the security team is still working to recover access to the account. As of 06:00 AM UTC, posts promoting the airdrops have become unavailable.
CEO and Founder of ChainGPT, Ilan Rakhmanov, chimed into the conversation with his own take. He said that it was possible that someone from the BNB team may have accidentally given permission to post to a malicious third party unknowingly.
“Maybe someone on BNB’s team connected a malicious 3rd party with permission to post without knowing It’s a malicious application. Check the apps you’ve connected and disconnect all of them,” said Rakhmanov in his post.
CEO of Pet Express Sri Lanka and independent researcher Shanaka Anslem Perera also provided his input, saying that he considered the hack a “social-layer attack” because it wasn’t the chain that got compromised, but the X account.
He urged the BNB team to freeze the X handle and force a logout of all authenticator apps. Afterwards, he believes they should still post a post-mortem report so that other major crypto accounts may learn from the slip-up.
Meanwhile, many users have begun speculating on whether X accounts are truly safe; considering BNB Chain had a golden check mark and yet it was still infiltrated by an outside party. One user criticized X’s security measures on preventing gold checked accounts like BNB Chain from getting hacked or compromised so easily.
“If a golden account can’t be secured what’s the purpose of subscribing and paying that huge amount..” said the X user.
