Scam Alert: Ripple-Linked Flare Network Suffered Breach of Its Discord Channel

In what can be categorized as a relatively harmless security compromise, Flare Networks, the Ripple-backed blockchain protocol, announced that it suffered an exploit on one of its Discord addresses overnight. As unveiled by the protocol, the hackers gained access to the channel and, while active, they posted several phishing messages about a fake airdrop in a bid to lure unsuspecting users.

🚨ANNOUNCEMENT: Overnight, a compromised Flare team Discord address posted several phishing messages about a fake airdrop.

The offending user and messages have now been deleted, restoring full control over the Discord channel.

Thank you to our partners and community members…

— Flare ☀️ (@FlareNetworks) June 1, 2023

The protocol said it has deleted the offender as well as the messages posted and that it has regained full control of the Discord channel. This recorded compromise is best considered as the first the Flare Network will be recording since it launched its mainnet a few months ago.

With this experience, Flare is now warning its community to beware of fake announcements that may be too good to be true. 

The announcement reads: "Flare will never make announcements of this type, nor ask for your personal or security details. We recommend verifying information across a variety of Flare channels, including Telegram, Twitter, Discord and the website blog, before taking any action."

It became quite easy for the perpetrators to use airdrops as bait as Flare has been running a series of airdrop campaigns featuring its native token, FLR.

Impact on Flare token

Flare Network has spent a considerable amount of time building trust within its community, and despite the loyalty it has tried to create in the year-to-date period, the latest exploit attempt appears to be impacting the FLR token.

At the time of writing, the digital currency is changing hands at $0.02291 after plunging by 5.46% over the past 24 hours. The current price plunge is also deeply affected by the weekly growth of the digital currency as it has dropped by more than 13% in the week-to-date period.

Exploits are not uncommon in the crypto world, and popular examples include the Morgan Stanley impersonator, Morgan DF Fintoch, who scammed its users of more than $31 million.