The X account of Gloria Zhao, one of the lead developers of Bitcoin Core, was hacked to spread a fraudulent message related to an alleged development that would allow crypto assets to be “bridged” between Bitcoin and Solana. The episode, which occurred on January 20, raised alerts within the bitcoiner ecosystem, given the technical profile and reputation of the compromised account. The public warning came from Ava Chow, another relevant Bitcoin Core contributor, who warned that Zhao’s account had been compromised and explicitly requested do not interact with links published from that profile. Hours later, Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream, did the same and pointed out that the account was promoting scams.
One of the most obvious signs of the hack was the modification of the profile status of Zhao, who specializes in mempool and node policies, which began to display the message: «Bitcoin decides. Solana executes. «Everything else is noise».
Gloria Zhao’s X account profile. Source: As reported by BitcoinDynamic in July 2022, Zhao at that time became the first woman to be part of the maintainers group from the main Bitcoin Core code.
A false development between Bitcoin and Solana: possible scam and attack on reputation
As could be seen before the content was deleted, the attackers used the account to promote an alleged technical development that would allow assets to be transferred between Bitcoin and Solana.
These types of ads usually appeal to complex concepts, such as bridges between networks, to gain credibility and capture the attention of users, taking advantage of the technical authority of the compromised profile. These types of attacks do not only target end users. It could also have the purpose exploit the trust associated with recognized technical figures to amplify the reach of fraudulent schemes. «She’s obviously not building on Solana,» one user noted in the post promoting the development. So far, no details have been released about how the unauthorized access occurred or if the account has already been recovered.
