The oldest educational resource about Bitcoin Bitcoin.org it was hacked to display a fraudulent ad about the distribution of cryptocurrency.
When entering the site, users were met with a pop-up message with all the signs of one of the most common schemes for stealing cryptocurrency. It claims that the Bitcoin Foundtaion organization wants to support those who helped it all previous years, and therefore doubles the assets if they are sent to the specified address. Scammers are trying to create a sense of urgency, stating that only 10 thousand users will be able to participate in the distribution.
After the changes appeared, other pages also stopped opening on the site. It is completely unavailable at the time of publication. Namecheap registrar, in response to the appeal of bitcoin developer Matt Corallo on Twitter, confirmed the domain shutdown.
According to data from the blockchain, 0.4 BTC or about $17,700 was received to the specified address, and almost the entire amount came with the first transaction. Sometimes this is done by scammers themselves to create the appearance of other users ' trust in the offer.
Domain bitcoin.org It was registered on August 18, 2008, as it is assumed, by the creator of bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto. The administrator of the Cobra resource commented on the situation:
"Bitcoin.org never hacked, never. We switch to Cloudflare, and after two months we are hacked. Can you explain where you were directing my traffic? Because there was no traffic directly on my server during the hacking."
Matthew Prince, CEO of the Cloudflare CDN service, noted only last week that cryptocurrency sites are increasingly becoming the targets of hacker attacks:
"As the old saying goes:" Why do criminals rob banks? Because there is money there”" Now one of the main areas for cyber attacks are various cryptocurrency exchanges and other cryptocurrency-related parts of the universe. Hackers in this space are becoming more and more inventive, but we remain ahead."
According to one version, we can talk about an attack with DNS substitution. In March, the Cream Finance and PancakeSwap websites were hacked in a similar way.
In July bitcoin.org It was subjected to a major DDoS attack, which prompted Cobra to switch to Cloudflare.
"I don't think I've been insulted like this for a while. Ungrateful bastard – " he wrote at the time. – In the past, it was possible to conduct a sane fight against DDoS attacks. Now they can simply crash the site at their discretion. There is no more "struggle". They can crash the site and keep it in this state until they leave you alone."
In June, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright, who attributes the creation of bitcoin to himself, won in court in the case of copyright on the white paper of the cryptocurrency against Cobra. Because of this, the site administrator was forced to restrict access to documentation from the UK.