The official LEGO Group website was hijacked by crypto scammers to promote a fake cryptocurrency.
The false advert for “LEGO coin” promised ‘secret rewards’ for those who bought the currency, and included a ‘buy now’ button which led to a phishing site.
The incident occurred at 3am CET, but LEGO’s Danish head office was quick to remove the message, which was only displayed for around 75 minutes. The toymaker confirmed no customer accounts were compromised, and that the cause has been identified and measures are being implemented to prevent another attack.
A popular scam
” On 5 October 2024 (October 4 evening in the US), an unauthorised banner briefly appeared on LEGO.com,” the company’s official statement said. “It was quickly removed, and the issue has been resolved. No user accounts have been compromised, and customers can continue shopping as usual. The cause has been identified and we are implementing measures to prevent this from happening again.”
The ad appeared as a banner on the Lego site, which redirected visitors to an external marketplace where they could purchase ‘LEGO tokens’ using popular cryptocurrency Ethereum.
Fake cryptocurrencies are frequently used by fraudsters to trick unsuspecting victims out of their money, with ads, posts, or social media messages accounting for the introductions of almost half of the scams.
These mostly come in the form of ‘investment’ opportunities, where victims are encouraged to join fake cryptocurrencies and buy into as much as they can, with some even showing false ‘gains’ or earned money. The scam comes to fruition when victims try to withdraw their money, but are charged extortionate ‘fees’ to do so.
In 2023, this type of fraud stole a staggering $4.57 billion according to the FBI, costing more money than ransomware that year. This has continued into 2024, with the average amount stolen per incident rising by almost 80%, primarily due to bitcoin’s success.
Tech companies have recently teamed up against the scams, providing tools and knowledge to help protect customers from fraud. Tech Against Scams have pledged to share intelligence and help educate people to reduce the amount of successful scams.
Via Engadget
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