Uniswap CEO Account Attacked in Latest Scam

Uniswap CEO and founder Hayden Adams has had his Twitter account compromised. Furthermore, hackers are increasingly targeting crypto industry personalities as an easy way to lure victims into their scams. 

On July 21, Uniswap reported the incident, warning users not to click on any links. “There is no giveaway, airdrop, or bounty. The Protocol has not been hacked or exploited,” it added. 

Twitter Hacks Increasing 

Around six hours after the alert from Uniswap, Hayden tweeted that he had regained control of his account again. 

“Appreciate everyone who helped out tonight, and the effort people put in to help with takedowns, warnings, etc. Will follow up with updates when ready.”

Very few details were available at the time of writing, but some have suggested that it could have been a SIM swap attack. 

A SIM swap hack is when attackers take over a victim’s phone to assume their identity. With this information, they can gain access to bank accounts, crypto accounts, and social media accounts. 

Additionally, the scam involved a fake message claiming that Uniswap had been exploited. Additionally, it prompted users to click a malicious link to revoke transactions that would send crypto to the attacker’s wallets. Adams has 254,600 followers, which is a wide net of potential victims. 

Furthermore, Twitter boss Elon Musk addressed the growing problem of bad actors and spammers on the network by imposing limits earlier this month. However, high-profile crypto personalities remain lucrative targets for hackers and scammers. 

In May, Sandbox CEO Arthur Madrid had his Twitter account hacked. The attackers commandeered his account to promote a fake “airdrop phishing scam. In June, a SIM-swap hack compromised crypto influencer Ben Armstrong’s Twitter account.  

Threads Flooded by Scammers 

Moreover, Meta’s newly launched Twitter doppelganger Threads has already been plagued with spam bots and scammers just weeks after it launched.

Scammers flocked to the Instagram-linked platform impersonating crypto accounts from Twitter to lure users into visiting malicious websites. 

In 2020 a slew of big Twitter accounts, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barak Obama, and Bill Gates, were targeted by hackers in a crypto scam.

Additionally, Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has reported that these types of attacks have increased by 40% in 2022 compared to the previous year. And they do not appear to be slowing down in 2023, either.