The verified Twitter account for the British Army was taken over by hackers who used it to promote NFTs and announce a fictitious attack on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
It was unclear whether the account had been recovered or not as of the time of publication, although a large number of NFT (non-fungible token) related retweets remained live on its feed.
Its name has reverted back to ‘British Army’ from ‘BAPESCLAN’, however — described the hackers as the “[number one] metavestor clan on the ETH [Ethereum] chain by a team with multi-billion dollar experience. Powered by @chaintechlabs.”
The hackers’ avatar, an NFT-style monkey dressed like Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, has also been removed, reverting to the default Twitter placeholder.
As of the time of publication, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was “unable to say” who was behind the hacking, according to Danielle Sheridan, defence editor at The Telegraph newspaper, which is close to Britain’s governing Conservative (Tory) Party.
While some social media users were amused by the British Army’s turn to shilling likely fraudulent digital images of monkey drawings, others were concerned by the implications, particularly in light of the hackers’ jokingly announcing a supposedly imminent attack on nuclear-armed Pakistan.
“Imagine if they instead used it to tweet something like ‘The Isle of White has been invaded by Russia.’ Surely an account like that should be more secure?” demanded analyst Joe Armitage.
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