Malicious actors appear to have infiltrated the X account of the New York Post in an attempt to deceive cryptocurrency users on the microblogging platform.

Some users from the crypto community on X recently reported receiving a private message from the X account of the New York Post inviting them to participate in a podcast and to contact them via Telegram.

The bogus messages were first discovered on May 3 by Kerberus founder and CEO Alex Katz, who shared a screenshot of a message supposedly from author and journalist Paul Sperry via the official nypost account.

“What is interesting about this case is that the scammer gained unauthorized access but did not post a Pump.fun address or wallet drainer. Instead, they are messaging users and directing them to Telegram,” noted cybersecurity engineer and NFT collector “Drew.”

After sending the message, the scammer blocks users from replying to prevent the real New York Post team from being alerted about the breach, he added.

Donny Clutterbuck from the NFT Bitcoin ordinals platform Fomojis also reported being contacted by the hacker, suggesting it could be a possible exploitation of Zoom when enabling audio.

When you click to enable audio, a pop-up offers the option to cancel or enable WiFi, he said before adding: “I think WiFi gives access to the network for the scammer.”

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said this breach was similar to one a few weeks ago when direct messages were sent from The Defiant's X account.

Cointelegraph contacted the New York Post for more information but did not receive an immediate response. There was nothing about the social media breach on the NYP or Sperry's X feeds.

Scammers seeking victims on Zoom

Scammers have increasingly changed their social engineering techniques to send messages directly to users after establishing trust in previous conversations, and the video conferencing platform Zoom has recently become a focus of cryptocurrency scams.

In April, Emblem Vault CEO Jake Gallen warned users to be cautious of malicious actors using Zoom after losing $100,000 in cryptocurrency assets. Gallen was also contacted via X to schedule a Zoom interview during which the scammer installed malware that drained his wallets.

This is not the first time the verified Twitter account of the New York Post has been hijacked. In 2022, an employee hacked the account to post a series of obscene messages designed to look like real headlines.