For a brief period of time on Thursday 23rd September, hackers took control of the Bitcoin.org website and displayed the old double your money fraud.
Apparently, a DNS attack was used to perpetrate this crime against the internet. Because of this, the Bitcoin community became aware of the situation and contacted Cobra, the owner of the pseudonymous website, as well as the firm that was hosting the domain.
Bitcoin.org had gone down a few minutes later. Unfortunately, a trusting individual outran them and sent 0.4 BTC to the scammer’s address… or did he, really?
Someone sent half a bitcoin🤦♂️ pic.twitter.com/pnyJIHJZIN— Harrison Bergeron (@coinableS) September 23, 2021
There is evidence of the transaction, but there is speculation that it was carried out by the scammers themselves in an attempt to make the operation appear legitimate. In the same way that a busker puts some change in his hat in order to urge others to contribute That, on the other hand, is only a rumour. It’s possible that someone has been duped.
In any event, everyone else should express their gratitude to Matt Corallo, a Bitcoin Core contributor who took it upon himself to contact the domain name registrars and persuaded them to temporarily take down the site before a catastrophe occurred.
Namecheap to the rescue, thanks y’all https://t.co/HfmQVvUDt9— Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt) September 23, 2021
When Cobra revealed the Bitcoin.org hack, he or she stated, “We are currently investigating how the hackers were able to place the scam modal on the website.” As of now, there is no information available about this. Cobra also stated that Bitcoin.org “could be unavailable for a few days,” but fortunately, this was not required.
https://t.co/OsFgRFRRZb has been compromised. Currently looking into how the hackers put up the scam modal on the site. May be down for a few days.— Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) September 23, 2021
A little later in the day, Cobra contacted their new hosting company, CloudFlare, via Twitter and informed them that their website had never been hacked before, and that this had suddenly occurred after moving to their servers. In response, the corporation made a change, and the original tweet was finally removed from the internet.
Cobra and Bitcoin.org made headlines around the world a few of months ago. Earlier this year, Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur and Satoshi Nakamoto cosplayer, was successful in having a UK court order that the Bitcoin Whitepaper be removed from the internet. Yahoo! Finance alerted the public at the time, stating,
“Cobra, the pseudonymous creator of the Bitcoin.org website, has been ordered by London’s High Court to discontinue hosting its copy of the Bitcoin white paper.Citing copyright infringement brought forward by nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright, the judge had no option but to rule a default judgment because Cobra chose not to make an appearance.”
https://t.co/yc0aKbZcer is Hacked by Scam. pic.twitter.com/2qmRMS2lJh— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 23, 2021
Is there any connection between the hack and Craig Wright’s identity? There isn’t a single piece of evidence to support this, yet rumors are circulating. They claim that he is the only one who has been incentivized to attack Bitcoin.org. However, 0.4 BTC is a pretty good incentive in and of itself. Perhaps the scammers were only interested in the act of scamming.
In any case, in order to seal the loopholes, Yahoo reports Cobra as explaining why he decided not to appear in court:
“Unfortunately the court rules allowed for me to be sued pseudonymously, however, I couldn’t defend myself pseudonymously. So I was put in an impossible situation of losing my privacy or losing the case in a default judgment.”
