Google-owned safety agency Mandiant spent a number of hours attempting to regain management of its account on X (previously generally known as Twitter) on Wednesday after an unknown scammer hijacked it and used it to unfold a hyperlink that tried to steal cryptocurrency from individuals who clicked on it.

“We’re conscious of the incident impacting the Mandiant X account and are working to resolve the difficulty,” firm officers wrote in an announcement. “We have since regained management over the account and are at present engaged on restoring it.” The assertion didn’t reply questions asking if the corporate had decided how the account was compromised.

The hacked Mandiant account was initially used to masquerade as one belonging to Phantom, an organization that gives a pockets for storing cryptocurrency. Posts on X inspired individuals to go to a malicious web site to see if their pockets was one in every of 250,000 that had been eligible for an award of tokens. Over a number of hours, X workers performed tug-of-war with the unknown scammer, with rip-off posts being eliminated solely to reappear, based on individuals who adopted the occasions.

Finally, the scammer modified the @mandiant username and reappeared underneath a brand new username. After utilizing the account to advertise a pretend web site impersonating Phantom and promising free tokens, it posted the cryptic message: “verify bookmarks once you get account again.” It additionally chided Mandiant to “change password please.”

On the time this submit went stay on Ars, the Mandiant profile displayed the message “This account doesn’t exist.”

Mandiant is without doubt one of the main safety corporations and finest recognized for serving to shoppers examine and get better from main community compromises. That vantage level provides it main insights into risk actors, lots of them backed by nation-states, and the customarily beforehand unknown ways, strategies, and procedures they use to compromise the safety of among the world’s strongest and well-resourced organizations. Google bought Mandiant in 2022 for $5.4 billion, which, on the time, was its second-biggest acquisition ever.

Many questions stay about Mandiant’s measures to safe its X account. Amongst them: Was it protected by a robust password and any type of two-factor authentication? Final month, somebody claimed to have found the social media website was susceptible to a “mirrored XSS,” a sort of vulnerability that may generally be used to compromise the safety of accounts when a professional person at present logged in clicks on a malicious hyperlink in a unique browser tab. The person mentioned they reported the vulnerability via professional channels however that the submission didn’t qualify underneath the X bug bounty program.

“Clicking a crafted hyperlink or going to some crafted internet pages would permit attackers to take over your account (posting, liking, updating your profile, deleting your account, and many others.),” Chaofan Shou, a College of California at Berkeley Ph.D. candidate, wrote final month.

Makes an attempt to achieve Phantom for remark had been unsuccessful.