Musk Impostors Hack Lawmaker, Publisher Accounts in New Crypto Scams

A number of verified Twitter accounts were compromised Monday - including those owned by a U.S. lawmaker, a film company, and a book publisher - all to impersonate SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk.

Each of the compromised accounts engaged in a well-known crypto giveaway scam by promising to send large amounts of bitcoin to any users who sent them small amounts first.

To further reinforce the impression that the compromised accounts were genuinely owned by Musk, the hackers copied over the Tesla founder's profile picture and retweeted some of his tweets.

Some accounts also pinned the bitcoin giveaway tweet.

At first glance the Elon Musk account is convincing because it has the 'verified' blue tick.

Some retweets from the real Elon Musk account were still on the page.

The official account of English discount clothing and homeware chain Matalan was hacked to display the same fraudulent message, attracting over 700 retweets and over 3,000 likes.

The issue has become serious enough to prompt the social networking company to take action, and freeze any account that changes its display name to "Elon Musk.".

The Pallone and Matalan accounts directed users to send some portion of bitcoin to the same address, which has received 326 transactions worth a total of more than 25 bitcoin as of press time, according to data from Blockchain.com.

The Pantheon account directed users to a different address, which saw a further $12,000 in bitcoin over a two-and-a-half-hour period, while the Patheon UK account only received around $2,500.