NFT scammers hijack the IVSS Twitter account to promote the fake 'GoblinTown' collection
On July 5, 2022, Venezuela’s Independence Day, the official Twitter account of the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (@ivssoficial, with approximately 284,000 followers) was compromised by attackers who posted a fake offer of free NFTs from the “GlobinTowm” collection (a knockoff of the real Goblin.Town collection). The links were designed to steal credentials, cryptocurrency funds, and user data. The IVSS warned its followers not to click on the links and migrated to a new account (@Somosivss). This was the second incident in less than a month following the same pattern, after the hijacking of the El Universal newspaper’s account.
Impact details
The IVSS official Twitter account was hacked and used to promote fake links to NFTs. Public documents indicate a risk to followers and warnings from IVSS, but no institutional data breach or financial losses have been confirmed.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Intrusions
- Subtype
- Unprivileged account compromise
- Confidence
- High
Severity assessment
Medium- Functional impact
- Minimal
- Information impact
- Integrity loss
- Affected scope
- Multiple users
- Critical service
- None
- Public confidence
- Limited
- Recoverability
- Regular
It has been confirmed that an official account was compromised and that followers were exposed to scams; however, there has been no confirmation of a data breach involving institutional data or a service disruption.
Timeline
The IVSS's official Twitter account (@ivssoficial) was hijacked and used to post a fake offer of free NFTs from the "GlobinTowm" collection.
The IVSS publicly warns that its account was hacked and asks followers not to click on fraudulent links; it creates the alternate account @Somosivss.