Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban said his email, which has notoriously connected him to average people and entrepreneurs for years, has become the latest victim of a cyberattack.
In a now removed post on X, formerly Twitter, the onetime Dallas Mavericks majority owner and soon-to-be ex-Shark Tank businessman claimed he was hacked after he received a call from a fake Google representative who imitated the company’s account recovery methods.
Cuban said he received a call from someone named “Noah,” and warned his followers not to trust anything coming from his email account.
“Hey @google @sundarpichai. I just got hacked at my mcuban@gmail.com because someone named noah at your 650-203-0000 called and said I had an intruder and spoofed googles recovery methods,” Cuban wrote. “If anyone gets anything from mcuban@gmail.com after 3:30pm pst it’s not me.”
The phone number that Cuban received a call from is the same one associated with Google Assistant, a software that uses artificial intelligence for a variety of tasks. However, Google says on its account recovery page that it does not ask for passwords or verification codes over phone, email or messages.
“Someone was really sophisticated in doing this,” Cuban told The Dallas Morning News over email Sunday after he recovered his account. “They found a way to get into one of my Google apps. So my Google Account showed me notifications that there was an unknown device using one of my Google apps.”
Cuban said he repeatedly deleted the device from his account but it kept coming back as he was receiving calls from the Google Assistant phone number, which he ignored on four separate occasions.
“Usually when you delete the unknown device they go away after a time or two. This time it didn’t,” Cuban said. “So I answered the call. They had me follow the normal Google process. They literally had the same 3 numbers thing, etc. And thats how they got my email. They locked me out.”
A thank you to @google for your help in getting my account back. Truly appreciate all you did.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) June 24, 2024
Some time after his X post, he called a contact at Google who locked the account and helped him recover it shortly after.
Google did not immediately respond to an emailed interview request Sunday afternoon from The News.
It’s not the first time Cuban has been hacked. Last September, he was the victim of a cyberattack, which made him lose over $850,000 from his cryptocurrency wallet titled ‘Mark Cuban 2′ on blockchain platform Etherscan.
At the time, Cuban said he was “pretty sure” he accidentally downloaded a version of crypto wallet platform MetaMask which contained malware. The wallet had been inactive for nearly five months when he was hacked, he said.
“I went on MetaMask for the first time in months. They must have been watching,” Cuban said at the time.
Cuban has been in the news multiple times this year.
He sold a majority stake in his beloved Mavericks last November, has begun producing medications in Deep Ellum through his online pharmacy Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs and has been in social media spats with figures like Tesla Motors CEO and X owner Elon Musk, during which he defended diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Cuban isn’t the only North Texan to be involved a cyberattack. Dallas-based giants like AT&T and Frontier Communications are both facing class action lawsuits from its customers over leaking personally identifiable information, like the names and social security numbers, of thousands of users.
The city of Dallas and Tarrant Appraisal District have also been the targets of recent hackers looking to make some quick cash.
Ultimately, Cuban was hacked for the same reason that hundreds of thousands of Americans have also been hacked: forgetting to update old information, he said.
“Moral of the story, I should have changed my older passwords,” Cuban said. “They must have gotten it from one of the many hacks out there. And I should have stuck with my instincts of thinking Google wouldn’t call.”
