Crypto scammers hack OpenAI’s press account on X

OpenAI’s official press account on X appears to have been hacked by the same cryptocurrency scammers who did the same to the company’s leadership in previous months.

Late Monday afternoon, the OpenAI Newsroom, an account that OpenAI created to spotlight recent product- and policy-related announcements, posted about an alleged new OpenAI-branded blockchain token, “$OPENAI.”

“We are thrilled to announce $OPEANAI [sic]The post read: The difference between AI and blockchain technology. “All OpenAI users are eligible to receive a portion of the initial supply of $OPENAI. Holding $OPENAI will give us access to all of our future beta programs.”

Of course, $OPENAI doesn’t exist — and the post on X linked to a phishing site designed to mimic the legitimate OpenAI website (except for the obviously false URL “token-openai.com”). A prominent “CLAIM $OPENAI” button on the fake site encouraged unsuspecting users to connect their cryptocurrency wallets, presumably in an attempt to steal those users’ login credentials.

As of the time of publication, both the post and the site were still up — along with a repost and a reply promising “further information” about the token.[to] Coming later this week.” Comments were disabled on the malicious X post, making the hack less obvious than it might have been otherwise.

We’ve contacted OpenAI and X for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.

This isn’t the first time accounts linked to OpenAI have been compromised as part of phishing campaigns.

In June 2023, the account of OpenAI CTO Mira Murati posted a similar message promoting the fictitious $OPENAI crypto token. And just three months ago, the accounts of OpenAI chief scientist Jacob Pachocki and OpenAI researcher Jason Wei were hacked and used to publish scam posts similar to the posts on the OpenAI newsroom account today.

Reporting on the hacking of Murati’s account last June, Coinspeaker said the scammers used a “crypto drainer” tool that sent all the NFTs and tokens in victims’ wallets to the scammers’ wallets after they signed in to the fake OpenAI site.

Other high-profile X accounts belonging to tech companies and celebrities have been hacked in recent years to promote crypto scams. In perhaps the most infamous example, in 2020, hackers targeted accounts belonging to Apple, Elon Musk and Joe Biden to post the address of a Bitcoin wallet, with the claim that any payment made to the address would be doubled and sent back.

According to the FBI, Americans lost $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency scams in 2023, a 45% increase from 2022. 2024 is set to be just as bad – or even worse. According to the FTC, more than 50,000 scams were reported in the first half of this year, causing consumers to lose nearly $2.5 billion.