On the 26th of May, 2023, Arthur Madrid, the CEO of The Sandbox, fell victim to a Twitter account breach. The perpetrators gained access to his account and utilized it to promote a fraudulent airdrop scheme. Madrid confirmed the incident in a statement shared on his verified Twitter handle. The hackers exploited his account to advertise a fake airdrop that promised to give away free tokens to those who sent a certain amount of cryptocurrency to a designated wallet address. The post was quickly taken down, but a number of people had already seen it.
Sandbox Repose to the Hack
The Sandbox is a popular virtual world project that lets users create, share, and profit from their own gaming experiences. Lately, it has been getting a lot of attention, and its native token, SAND, has seen a significant increase in value. This hack has raised concerns about the security of social media accounts, especially those belonging to prominent figures in the cryptocurrency industry.
A screenshot of that scamming post promoting a SAND token airdrop was recently shared by The Sandbox. That scamming post encouraged individuals to visit a website with an alternate URL to verify their eligibility and obtain the tokens. The official Twitter account of The Sandbox issued a cautionary message regarding the scam, revealing that an impostor had hijacked the account and was advertising a fraudulent SAND token airdrop through a phishing link.
The Sandbox team has verified that they are presently implementing measures to take down the deceitful website and resolve the issue at the earliest. At 8:26 pm UTC, the reported fraudulent site was effectively eliminated and is now displaying a 404 error page.
Rise of Crypto Hacks
There has been a surge in cryptocurrency hacks in recent years, leading to annual global losses ranging from $3 billion to $14 billion. The most significant cryptocurrency hack to date was the 2022 Ronin Network breach, which resulted in the theft of $625 million worth of cryptocurrency. In 2020, hacks and thefts compromised Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth $513 million, marking an almost 40% increase.
From January to July 2022, multiple services were targeted worldwide by cybercriminals resulting in the theft of around $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency. This represents a significant surge of 60% compared to the same period in the previous year. In total, the theft caused by hacks amounted to $3.7 billion in 2022, which is a 58% increase from the $2.3 billion stolen in 2021 by cybercriminals.
