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The technology director of open AI His Twitter account was reportedly hacked Thursday night to promote a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.
Mira Murati, who has worked at OpenAI for more than five years helping to create advanced artificial intelligence software, lost control of her Twitter account around 6:03 p.m. Pacific time, according to the timestamps of the tweets. . Her account began promoting a new cryptocurrency called "$OPENAI" that was allegedly "powered by artificial intelligence-based language models."
The unauthorized tweets encouraged Murati's followers to send money to an Ethereum digital wallet address to receive free airdropped coins as part of a new initial coin offering. The tweets were then quickly deleted, only to reappear minutes later with slightly altered wording. The tweets were live on Murati's account for more than 45 minutes. Murati's account has since been updated to its original status and the tweets have been deleted.
The incident highlights the risks of high-profile Twitter accounts being targeted by scammers looking to use their credibility and wide following to swindle people out of money under false pretenses.
The apparent hack of Murati's account comes just four months after Twitter announced changes to its Two Factor Authentication policies that removed SMS text messaging as an option for account security, unless users pay for Twitter Blue's premium subscription service. Security experts have warned that the changes could make high-profile accounts more vulnerable to takeovers.
Murati's Twitter account displays a blue check mark on her profile, indicating that she is subscribed to Twitter Blue and would have retained access to SMS two-factor authentication. VentureBeat has reached out to OpenAI for comment and will update this story when we hear back.
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