G SUITE

DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

"Google’s G Suite is a suite of applications for businesses. It offers cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products." "With G Suite, Google has been developing an alternative office package that serves the needs of companies with their everyday work. You can use Gmail for emailing, Google Calendar for appointments, Docs for word processing, Sheets for calculations, and Slides for presentations, just to name a few."

"Cryptocurrency giveaway scams work by offering money to victims. There’s a catch, of course: They must first send a small amount of money to ‘verify their address’. The money in return never shows up and the attackers cash out."

"[I]n the case of the G Suite tweet, [the posts were] successfully "promoted" through Twitter's ad service to appear higher up in followers' feeds."

"Authenticity is a key factor in these scams. Accounts with verified status shown by a blue tick carry more of that. So it makes sense for attackers to hack verified accounts and then use them to impersonate very high profile people with lots of followers."

"On Tuesday[, November 13th, 2018], criminals went one better, managing to compromise the official account of Google’s G Suite." "Cointelegraph reported that the official Twitter account of Google's G Suite was supposedly compromised to promote a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway scam. Scammers reportedly spread a message luring users to participate in a fraudulent 10,000 BTC giveaway." " This gave them an authentic platform to address the account’s 822,000 followers as Google itself, rather than impersonating it with another hacked account." "It isn’t clear whether Google [was] using two-factor authentication."

"The Bitcoin giveaway scam quickly followed, claiming that G Suite was now accepting cryptocurrency payments and offering a total of 10,000 Bitcoins (BTC) to “all community”. The scammers asked for between 0.1 and 2 BTC, and promised to return ten times the amount sent. They also added a bonus: send 1 BTC or more and get an additional 200% back."

"According to the Hard Fork, the message disappeared barely more than 10 minutes after it had appeared."

"This morning an unauthorized promoted tweet was shared from the G Suite account," a Google spokesperson said in a statement provided to Business Insider. "We removed the tweet and are investigating with Twitter now."

"A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider that the G Suite account was locked as the team discovered it was "innapropriately accessed," and that the platform would continue to "closely monitor" the situation."

"A quick look at the address posted in the scam revealed no transactions at the time of writing. This is probably because Google removed the post quickly after spotting what had happened."

"In an email to Hard Fork, a Google spokesperson said the following about the incident:"

"This morning an unauthorized promoted tweet was shared from the G Suite account. We removed the tweet and are investigating with Twitter now."

"The [Twitter] platform is apparently taking further steps and investing in "proactive tools" to fight the cryptocurrency scams, says the Twitter spokesperson."

Google's G Suite Twitter account was breached and used to launch a promoted scam for a 10,000 bitcoin giveaway. The scheme promised to give 10x whatever users would provide. Analysis of the receive wallet does not show that any bitcoin were received, so it appears that the scheme was not successful in stealing any funds.

Four Fake Cryptocurrency Wallets Found on Google Play Store (Mar 6)
Report: Google G Suite Twitter Account Compromised to Promote 10,000 Bitcoin Scam (Mar 8)
Google G Suite - the affordable office alternative - News, tips & guidance for agile, development, Atlassian-Software (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, ...) and Google Cloud (Mar 8)
Official Google Twitter account hacked in Bitcoin scam – Naked Security (Mar 8)
Google's G Suite account on Twitter hacked to promote Bitcoin scam - Neowin (Mar 8)
G Suite Twitter hacked for Bitcoin scam - 9to5Google (Mar 8)
Google G Suite Twitter account got hacked - TechEngage (Mar 8)
Google's G Suite Twitter Account Hacked, Promotes Bitcoin Giveaway Scam (Mar 8)
Google’s G Suite Twitter account is the latest to get hacked in bitcoin scam - The Verge (Mar 8)
https://twitter.com/gsuite (Mar 8)
Google account hacked to promote Bitcoin scam on Twitter (Mar 8)

More case studies

Target Twitter Fake
Bitcoin Giveaway

South African
Robbed