29.03.2024

The main site about Bitcoin from the creator of the cryptocurrency Satoshi Nakamoto was hacked by scammers

Yesterday, when visiting Bitcoin.org, users may have seen a pop-up notification about a «giveaway of coins» from the Bitcoin Foundation. In this way, the organization allegedly «wanted to thank» all those who had actively supported it for several years.

The message included a QR code with a cryptocurrency address where visitors could send their coins to get double the amount back. The rest of the pages of the site were blocked, that is, you could only see this message. Tells more about what is happening.

By tradition, let’s start with an explanation. Bitcoin has no official resources, since in essence this would contradict the decentralized nature of the cryptocurrency, which depends only on its users. However, some sites have already become legendary for their merit and age.

These include Bitcoin.org, a platform containing basic information about the first cryptocurrency. Most importantly, it was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous developer of the digital asset itself. So, in fact, this is one of the few phenomena that connects us with the creator of BTC.

Who Hacked the Bitcoin Site?

All of the above was a scam. At the time of this writing, the aforementioned address received just over 0.40 BTC, or $ 17,800 at the current cryptocurrency rate. However, not all of these transactions can belong to deceived victims: some Bitcoin fans believe that these are transfers from the scammers themselves to create the appearance of activity and the alleged workability of this scheme.

The main page of the site at the time of the hack

Recall that the Bitcoin.org website was registered by the anonymous creator of the main cryptocurrency Satoshi Nakamoto and the developer Martti Malmi back in 2008. It is the oldest cryptocurrency-related web portal. It does not belong to the Bitcoin Foundation, a non-profit organization of Bitcoin developers created in 2012.

At the same time, it has enough useful information about the first cryptocurrency. In particular, the site contains materials about the basics of Bitcoin, possible options for its use, as well as a list of reasons why the first cryptocurrency can be considered innovative. In addition, the resource contains the so-called BTC whitepaper – the main document that describes the purpose and features of a digital asset. It was created by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Note that we have already analyzed the contents of the BTC whitepaper. Its key points are discussed in a special material .

Scam wallet address in blockchain explorer

Twitter responded quickly enough to problems with the site. Hosting provider Namecheap for this page has also been notified of this. As a result, the company’s prompt actions to temporarily disable the domain helped reduce the scale of potential losses for those gullible users who could send bitcoins to the fraudsters’ wallet. That is, in fact, the problem was quickly eliminated.

According to Decrypt, the anonymous owner of the site, under the pseudonym Cøbra, reacted to the events a couple of hours after the news was released and confirmed that an outsider had indeed gained access to edit the platform. The way in which the hackers managed to hack Bitcoin.org remains unclear. That being said, Cøbra suggested that the attackers exploited a DNS configuration vulnerability after the website migrated to the Cloudflare platform two months ago.

Cøbra’s tweet about the hack

We checked the actual situation: at the moment Bitcoin.org is working as usual, for some time there were problems with access to the Bitcoin whitepaper via a direct link, but now everything looks fine. The scammers failed to raise large sums in this incident, although it could potentially lead to similar losses – just like after the Twitter hack last year.

All site tabs are also normal.

Bitcoin.org website now

We believe that the idea of ​​trying to make money on this scheme was initially a failure. Still, newbies usually search for information about cryptocurrency on Google and get acquainted with news resources, rather than go to primary sites.

Accordingly, most likely this trick of scammers was noticed only by experienced Bitcoin fans who visit this resource out of respect for the merits of Satoshi and his brainchild. In addition, the scheme of deception itself has been known for many years, and beginners have probably heard of it. Therefore, there is a possibility that there was no question of any kind of earnings in this case.

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