British Army’s Twitter, YouTube Accounts Breached; Used to Promote NFTs

Britain's army said its Twitter and YouTube accounts had been breached on Sunday.

As of 6pm GMT (11:30pm IST), the @BritishArmy handle, which is verified by Twitter, had retweeted a number of posts promoting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on its timeline.

The army YouTube account had been renamed 'Ark Invest' and showed several videos relating to cryptocurrency.

"We are aware of a breach of the Army's Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is under way," an army spokesperson said.

"We take information security extremely seriously and are resolving the issue. Until the investigation is complete it would be inappropriate to comment further."

The army's Twitter feed currently has 362,000 followers, while the YouTube channel has 177,000 subscribers.

Ark Invest is the name of a global investment firm. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment submitted via email and the company's website.

Last month, Axie Infinity, the popular blockchain gaming platform, announced that it had finally restored its Ethereum-linked sidechain called the Ronin Network three months after it suffered a major breach. In March, a hack attack on this bridge depleted a whopping $625 million (roughly Rs. 4,729 crore) from the gaming company.

In a bid to tackle risks of a hack attack, Ronin Bridge now has a set daily withdrawal limit of $50 million (roughly Rs. 395 crore) which will be reset every 24 hours. If the limit is hit early in the day, it can be reset by an administrator.

Meanwhile, blockchain research firm Chainalysis recently launched a hotline to accept reports of crypto hacking attempts. If entities are approached with suspicious crypto payment requests from strangers, they can call up this hotline and register their alerts. The phoneline will be functional 24x7 and user- grievances around the theft, code exploit, or ransomware attack will be noted.