Twitter cryptocurrency scammers have claimed their largest prey ever: hackers briefly hijacked the official account of American retail behemoth Target to push malicious Bitcoin giveaway links to its almost two million followers.

The tweet, which has since fortunately been deleted, encouraged users to send a small sum of cryptocurrency for a chance to enter a massive $30 million Bitcoin giveaway (5,000 BTC).

As it always goes, instead of giving away cryptocurrency, the scammers merely leave naive investors with empty pockets.

Target has yet to address the incident with an official statement. It will be interesting to know more about how the breach occurred.

It remains unclear how successful the attack was, but the Bitcoin address associated with the malicious giveaway links has received only a handful of small transactions today.

Of course, blockchain insiders have previously noted it is possible the scammers make a number of small transactions to themselves to lend more credibility to the giveaway campaigns.

For the record, this is the latest in a string of organized campaigns targeting verified accounts to spread cryptocurrency scams.

Just yesterday, hackers breached the accounts of US and Israeli politicians, as well as the official account of the Indian Consulate in Frankfurt, to dupe naive enthusiasts into sending them money.

We’ve reached out to Target for commend; we will update this story accordingly, if we hear back.

Update 16:12 UTC : Target has since confirmed the hacking incident in an email to Hard Fork. See its full response here .

Cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia resumes trading months after debilitating hack

Cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia has resumed trading following a debilitating hack in mid-January.

The New Zealand-based company said on Twitter today that it had resumed trading “on 40 trade pairs […] quantified as secure,” adding that it would continue to expand its offering as more coins were cleared. A list of the available trading pairs is available on its website.

As previously reported by Hard Fork , the exchange is thought to have had more than 1,095 digital assets available for trade when it went offline a couple of months ago.

As one of the longest-serving cryptocurrency exchanges, Cryptopia made headlines after it announced “a security breach which resulted in significant losses” on January 14, 2019.

At the time, Cryptopia confirmed the matter was being investigated by New Zealand police and its high tech crimes division, both of which were treating it as “a major crime.”

In February, Cryptopia said that worst case, 9.4% of its total holdings had been stolen during the hack, but it failed to provide an estimate in monetary terms.

Speculation about total losses mounted in the immediate aftermath of the attack – with some estimating them at $16 million – but it’s likely we’ll have to wait until the investigation concludes to find out exactly how much damage was done.

Want to find out more about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology? Check out our Hard Fork track at TNW 2019 !

Belgian watchdog’s list of scammy cryptocurrency ventures grows to 131 sites

The end of 2019 is on the horizon and the cryptocurrency world hasn’t changed. The Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) is having to warn netizens about cryptocurrency scams.

Earlier this week, the FSMA issued another update to its list of known cryptocurrency investment scams that seemingly never stops growing.

The suspicious sites list has now swelled to include warnings about 131 websites that are known to dupe unsuspecting victims out of their money.

As ever, these scams revolve around the same principle. The websites offer the promise of easy, secure, and lucrative investments that claim to generate high returns. But after initial investments are taken, no return is ever paid out to the investor-cum-victim.

The latest websites to be added to the list are:

www.bitcoinmarketscaom

www.bitcointradersproom

oinsmeom

rypto-sfom

tc-marketo

isheriom

www.ltc-marketom

www.stsroyalom

dscapitalgrouom

Given that it’s 2019, one might expect that people should finally be wising up to cryptocurrency scams; and that scams should finall y be falling into obscurity as people see through their thin veneers of truth.

But it seems there is no end.

Belgian authorities have been maintaining the list since at least last year, and still regularly publish updates when new scam websites are found and added to it.

It should be noted though, that the list isn’t exhaustive. It’s compiled from complaints logged by those affected by the scammy sites. In reality, there are probably far, far more shady cryptocurrency investment websites out there.

Maybe we just have to face up to the fact that scams, shills, and shitcoins are a fact of the cryptocurrency life. Be careful out there.