Hey Hivers! Every day we receive a lot of DMs, and some of them are quite strange. I decided to share today's story with you because I believe it will help you reclaim your identity if you ever get hacked and show you how to verify if you are not talking to the hacker. Of course, each hack is different in nature, and one size can't fit all, but I still believe this information will be useful for someone someday.
Recently, our fellow Hiver kenechukwu97 got hacked on Discord and Twitter. I initially assumed the hacker was a bot dropping texts in DMs, but this time it wasn't a bot. A person sending messages to your online friends is scary because those text messages could be manipulative. Although it involved suspicious messages like all hacked accounts send, let me show you some messages from the hacked accounts on Discord and Twitter.
How is it related to me? 'kenechukwu97' contacted me with the different discord account 'kene_valentine'. The request was:
Hello, I'm on Hive as kenechukwu97.
My Discord account was hacked and the account is still in HIVE LEARNERS Discord server.
Please ban it when you see this.
The first thought that came into my mind was what if the account contacting me is just someone who is anger at 'kenechukwu97' and wants him to get banned in discord servers. The hacker also changed 'About me' as he was aware of this other Discord account too.
I asked if he can send me 0.001 hive with the memo to claim his identity. Why I did that? Because I hold responsible for my actions even if I am helping someone. What if I end up helping a harmful person instead? Anyway, this is the memo he sent me.
http://hive.ausbit.dev/tx/8824c181a3ae91ce62dd6ce8de84f3ad40402207
This was enough for me to know who currently owns his onchain account. But he still posted on Ecency Waves too.
https://ecency.com/waves/@ecency.waves/waves-2024-07-23#@kenechukwu97/wave-2024724t113452780z
I also asked for and collected proof that this hacked account is sending scam messages. The above two screenshots (in start of blog) I added from Discord and Twitter further cleared my doubts.
I reported this to the mods and got the hacked Discord account banned in HiveLearners. But why stop there? I checked all mutual servers where this hacked account was a member and reported this imposter. It was necessary because this account had stolen an identity that people still trust, and it was being used to send scammy messages. What if more victims fell into the trap, seeing mutual friends and servers?
As always, thekittygirl was the fastest to ban the account from the Hive server. She always responds to my queries quickly. She also mentioned that she was aware of this case and that the real 'kenechukwu97' was trying to get the hacked Discord account disabled by Discord.
Then Ecency also banned the account from their Discord. At this point, these steps were taken to minimize the damage the hacker could do by stealing the identity.
Why does sharing this matter? I personally believe that by reading this, you might understand a new type of scam because we had two identities here claiming to be real. Don't worry, the mystery is solved. He can video call to prove further, but of course, his real face and voice is known by only a few.