Bitcoin.org, the prominent informational site dedicated to educating and facilitating the understanding of the Bitcoin [BTC] ecosystem, has been compromised again. The site shows a pop-up shows a message inviting the visitors to send money to a BTC wallet claiming that the funds will be doubled and sent back.
The message further read that the “Bitcoin Foundation” is giving back to the community and that the offer is limited to the first 10K users. It also includes a QR code and an address below.
Additionally, only the homepage of Bitcoin.org appears to have been functional, while the other pages, including FAQs, show a 4040 error.
The website’s pseudonymous owner, “Cøbra,” confirmed the news and said that the site might be down for a few days. His tweet read,
“Bitcoin.org has been compromised. Currently looking into how the hackers put up the scam modal on the site. May be down for a few days.”
This isn’t an isolated event. Giveaway scams are rampant on the micro-blogging site Twitter as well as Youtube, and several victims have fallen lost significant funds after sending their tokens in hopes of getting more in return. In fact, both Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak have sued YouTube over the fraudulent content. However, not much has changed.
Bitcoin.org fiasco
Bitcoin.org is an open-source project and is home to Bitcoin Core, the most popular software version of BTC’s code. It supports the development of the world’s largest cryptocurrency and also serves as a directory to make tools more accessible that are needed to start transacting in BTC.
The website, which is the oldest education resource site registered in 2008, also aims to promote new users to adopt cryptocurrency and start transacting from any corner of the globe without worrying about traditional rules. However, of late, the site has been at the receiving end of several controversies.
Earlier in June, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto and BSV advocate Craig Wright won a legal battle claiming copyright infringement on the part of the website for featuring the BTC whitepaper after the pseudonymous owner chose not to mount a defense.
Just days after the UK courts ordered Bitcoin.org to stop hosting the whitepaper over copyright infringement, the site faced a massive ransomware attack, where the hackers wanted a ransom of 0.5 BTC. Last year, the site was hit by another Distributed Denial of Service [DDoS] attack when the entire crypto market was just getting started on the bull run. It remained inaccessible for a couple of hours.