Hackers use New York Post’s X account to send scam DMs, users report

Malicious actors appear to have infiltrated the New York Post’s X account in an attempt to scam crypto users on the microblogging platform. 

Some X users from the crypto community have recently  reported  having received a private message from the New York Post’s X account inviting them to feature in a podcast and to contact them via Telegram. 

The spurious messages were first  discovered  on May 3 by Kerberus founder and CEO Alex Katz, who shared a screenshot of a message made out to be from author and journalist Paul Sperry via the official nypost account. 

“What’s interesting about this case is that the scammer gained unauthorized access but didn’t post a Pump.fun address or wallet drainer. Instead, they’re messaging users and then directing them to Telegram,”  observed  cybersecurity engineer and NFT collector “Drew”.

After sending the message, the scammer blocks users from replying to prevent the actual New York Post team from being alerted to the compromise, he added.  

Donny Clutterbuck from NFT Bitcoin’s ordinals platform Fomojis also  reported  having been contacted by the hacker, suggesting that it could be a potential Zoom exploit from enabling audio. 

When you click to enable audio, a pop-up gives the option to either cancel or enable WiFi, he said before adding, “I guess WiFi gives network access to the scammer.” 

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said this compromise was similar to one from a few weeks ago when direct messages were sent from The Defiant’s X account.

Cointelegraph contacted the New York Post for more information but did not receive an immediate response. There was nothing regarding the social media compromise on the NYP or Sperry’s X feeds. 

Scammers seeking victims on Zoom 

Scammers have increasingly shifted their social engineering techniques to messaging users directly after having established trust from previous conversations, and video conference platform Zoom has become a  hotbed of crypto scams  recently. 

In April, Emblem Vault CEO Jake Gallen  warned users  to be wary of malicious actors using Zoom after losing $100,000 in crypto assets. Gallen was also contacted via X to arrange a Zoom interview during which the scammer installed malware that drained his wallets. 

It is not the first time the New York Post’s verified Twitter account has been hijacked. In 2022, an employee  hacked the account  to post a series of obscene messages designed to look like real headlines.