This week, hackers successfully took control of several major Twitter accounts.
They then used these platforms to promote a new memecoin called "HACKED."
Despite successfully pulling off the scheme, the scammers only managed to make around $8,000.
Unlike regular hacks, the scammers openly acknowledged their actions and encouraged investors to participate.
The recent incident shows the growing state of scams on high-throughput chains like Base and Solana.
2024 has been a major year of Twitter (X) hacks so far.
In addition to legitimate pumps and dumps from celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner, Rich the Kid, and a host of others, there have been several hacks on celebrities like 50 Cent, Ariana Grande, and so on.
This time around, the scammers successfully orchestrated a major hack this week. However, unlike the regular pumps and dumps, where hackers ran off with millions of dollars, these particular exploiters were particularly unlucky.
Here's how a group of hackers took over several high-profile accounts and made only around $8,000.
According to reports from independent blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, scammers pulled off a major exploit on 18 September.
Several major accounts were compromised during the hack, including Lenovo India, Yahoo News UK, MoneyControl, Oliver Stone, People, and Krystal DeFi.
Soon after taking control of these accounts, the hackers used them all to promote a Solana-based memecoin called "$HACKED."
However, this isn’t even the strangest part of the hack.
Hacks on several accounts
Unlike regular hacks, where the exploiters typically try to hide their actions, those responsible for Wednesday's hack were more upfront.
The hackers openly acknowledged that the tweets were made from hacked accounts and even mentioned in one post, "On each account we hack, we publish the token address so we pump it and make profits together."
This approach seemed designed to lure investors by promising them "collective profit" in exchange for blindly buying this random token.
Despite the scale of the hack and the unconventional method the hackers employed, the scam failed.
According to ZachXBT, the scammers likely incurred a loss despite their efforts.
The blockchain investigator reports that the top traders who bought the token barely made around $1,000, while the token's total market cap generally reached a mere $67,000.
In essence, despite the sophistication of the hack and the need to break into multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, the hackers only managed to pocket $8000.
Interestingly, according to DexScreener, after shilling the HACKED token via these accounts, the cryptocurrency saw a brief spike of around 900% within an hour.
However, soon after this, it crashed rapidly and now has a market cap of a meager $4,100.
While the exact details of what caused the hack are unclear, ZachXBT speculated that the operators of these accounts might have granted permissions to some malicious site.
Overall, the recent hack on these X accounts is a continuation of targeted hacks that have been ongoing since May.
So far, in 2024, major companies like MicroStrategy, Algorand, Rocket Pool, Compound Finance, and Ava Labs have fallen victim to similar scams.
Scammers have also targeted individuals like Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, and even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
Only a few weeks ago, scammers made deepfakes of Apple’s Tim Cook during the iPhone 16 livestream.
The AI Tim Cook lookalike
The Cook lookalike asked viewers to deposit crypto into a wallet address, promising, "Once you complete your deposit, the system will automatically process it and send back double the amount of the cryptocurrency you deposited."
This is also similar to a scam pulled off with Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk in June, where over 35 YouTube channels live-streamed an AI-generated fake voice of Musk.
Within the videos, the fake Musk also promised to return double the amount of crypto to those who sent money to a shady address.
Overall, there is an ongoing concentration of hacks targeting high-profile entities and individuals and high-throughput blockchains like Solana and Base.
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