Bitcoin.org goes offline after a scam attack
One of the first and biggest websites about Bitcoins (BTC), the Bitcoin.org, has been hacked by a group of online scammers and had been down at the time of writing this report.
The anonymous curator of Bitcoin.org, Cobra, had announced on September 23 that the site was compromised as hackers had managed to put up a scam notice on the official page.
Bitcoin.org website’s developer Matt Corallo had reported on Twitter for fans to “not send funds to that address” as the site has got hacked, and the site was now replaced with a scam notice asking for free Bitcoins.
Soon after the post from Corallo, Namecheap also temporarily disabled the website. As per Cobra, the Bitcoin.org website may be “down for a few days.”
Later the website’s users had reported that hours before the website went offline, the Bitcoin.org home page was showing a fake giveaway announcement, and the scammers, through this classic fake announcement, managed collecting about $17,000 to their addresses.
Speaking about the scam, Cobra explained that the website had been disabled and that the hackers had, in all probability, exploited a flaw in the DNS. Cobra also stated that Cloudflare accounts and servers were not compromised.
The latest attack comes soon after Bitcoin.org had fallen victim to a DDoS attack in July 2021, with a ransom demand of an undisclosed amount of Bitcoins.
The attack happened just one week later, than a United Kingdom court had passed an order for the website to stop hosting the Bitcoin white paper. The ruling was pronounced in favour of self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin SV proponent Craig Wright.
