Ryan Taylor, the chief executive officer of the company behind the software that runs Dash’s network, recently saw hackers take over most of his social media accounts and use them to publish offensive content. The hackers also took over his SIM card, according to a circulating email.
The email reportedly reveals that Taylor’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts have been compromised, along with his personal cell phone’s SIM card. It adds that the full extent of the attack is still being accessed, and will continue to update users when new details surface.
At press time, Taylor has already recovered his Twitter account, and deleted the offensive content the hackers publish while in control.
My Twitter account was obviously compromised today. The account is now back under my control and will verify that through the @dashpay account.
— Ryan Taylor (@RTaylor05) May 10, 2018
Among the offensive content the hackers posted were attempts to troll Taylor’s followers and racist images, including one of Adolf Hitler saluting captioned with “when you’ve finally made it to lamboland.”
Other tweets praised Bitconnect’s Carlos Matos, and claimed he was the new CEO of Dashpay. Carlos Matos is well-known for his involvement with Bitconnect, a cryptocurrency investment platform widely believed to be a Ponzi scheme, that crashed after receiving cease and desist letters from regulators.
After Bitconnect went down, disgruntled investors hit it with a class-action lawsuit over the losses incurred from investing in its platform. Most of the platform’s promotors were also included in the class-action lawsuit.
While Taylor managed to reclaim his Twitter account, his LinkedIn account is, at press time, still unavailable. There aren’t a lot of available details on how his accounts were compromised, although the SIM card being affected hints at a social engineering tactic. Some theorize the hackers frequented 4chan over references to the website’s politically incorrect board.
CEO Dash core group seems to be hacked.@RTaylor05 pic.twitter.com/7C6XLUcZ28
— [ Romano ] (@RNR_0) May 9, 2018
Ever since most cryptocurrencies surged to new all-time highs in late 2017, with bitcoin hitting $19,200 in mid-December, hackers have been increasingly targeting cryptocurrency users and influencers.
As covered, Twitter scammers keep swapping the identities of hijacked verified accounts to trick users into sending them funds. Last month, hackers even hit the internet’s core infrastructure to swindle Ethereum users out of 215 Ether, worth about $163,400 at press time.
Dash itself seemingly wasn’t affected by Ryan Taylor’s hack, as the cryptocurrency is up by 3.81 percent in the last 24-hour period. According to CryptoCompare, it’s currently trading at $458 per token.
