The oldest education site bitcoin.org has been shut down in the course of a hack. According to the operator “Cøbra”, the commissioning of the website “could take a few days”.
Update: In the meantime, the problems on the site seem to have been resolved. The giveaway banner has been removed and the servers are available again.
bitcoin.org fell victim to a hack. Several US media reports unanimously. The homepage of the oldest educational address on the subject of Bitcoin and Blockchain is currently offline. Previously, a pop-up message was said to have been seen on the website in the early hours of the morning, calling on users to send BTC to an ominous address. They then promised to transfer back double the amount. Apparently it was a giveaway scam. The message said:
The Bitcoin Foundation gives something back to the community! We want to support our users who helped us over the past few years. Send Bitcoin to this address and get double the amount back. The offer is limited to the first 10,000 users.
Pop-up notification on bitcoin.org
Since to warn various users on Twitter before the fraud. One of them tried to contact the domain operator “Namecheap”. These announced on the social media platform that the website had been temporarily switched off. According to Blockchain.com Approximately 0.4 BTC (current equivalent: $ 17,670.40) has been transferred to the address at the time of writing. However, it is unclear whether the transactions actually included victims of the giveaway scam.
In the course of the fraud, the ominous operator “Cøbra” also spoke up and officially announced that bitcoin.org had been hacked. Investigate why the site might “be down for a few days”.
Bitcoin scammers pose as famous people
The giveaway scam is one of the most popular methods to lure naive users out of their pockets. The fraudsters imitate the social media accounts of famous personalities and post supposed competitions under their posts. In March, for example, Tesla boss Elon Musk was hit. The scammers succeeded in stealing almost 5 BTC.
In addition, bitcoin.org only hit the headlines in June when, following a legal battle with Craig Wright, a British court asked the site to remove the cryptocurrency whitepaper. This was followed by a massive DDoS attack on the website, whereupon blackmailers demanded around 0.5 BTC.
Wright is controversial in the scene as he has been proclaiming the invention of Bitcoin for himself for years. However, he has not yet been able to provide any valid evidence. The Australian had previously struck a similar blow against bitcoincore.org in January of this year.