Account tied to rapper Nelly compromised, used for crypto phishing scam

The X account associated with American rapper Nelly has allegedly been hacked.

According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, the attacker used the musician’s profile to launch social engineering attacks and lure people to a crypto-phishing site.

The attacker also changed Nelly’s profile, posing as a security analyst for Scam Sniffer, a web security solution.

“On-chain security analyst. Helping you catch scammers @realscamsniffer.”

Nelly’s account bio

ZachXBT cited two messages sent by the scammer to people in which he tried to claim that they were investigating the compromise of wallet confirmation on recipient addresses. This was also an attempt to steal funds by tricking users into signing malicious transactions.

Scam Sniffer on X confirmed the ZachXBT report:

However, at the time of writing, the account in X @NellioETH doesn’t exist. Presumably, the profile was blocked due to scam attempts.

Meanwhile, the total value of cryptocurrencies stolen by hackers since the beginning of 2023 has exceeded $1.15b, according to calculations by PeckShield. In September of this year alone, losses from 22 hacks of crypto projects amounted to $355.91m – almost a third of all losses.

At the same time, last year the crypto industry lost more than $3.77b due to 303 hacker attacks.