Jupiter, a Solana-based decentralized trade aggregator, had its X account briefly compromised, with the attacker utilizing it to advertise rip-off tokens, resulting in market turbulence.
The group has since regained management of the web page, confirming that no funds or buyer knowledge had been affected.
Hack Results in Token Rip-off Promotion
The drama kicked off within the early hours of February 6 when an unknown attacker took over Jupiter’s X account, which boasts greater than half 1,000,000 followers. They then began posting a couple of newly launched meme coin referred to as $MEOW, with the identify a play on the platform co-founder’s pseudonym, Meow.
On-chain data present that inside minutes of the promotion, the faux token’s market worth flew previous $20 million because it attracted unsuspecting traders. Nonetheless, the dangerous actor quickly drained its liquidity pool, leaving merchants unable to promote their holdings.
Curiously, as panic began spreading, the attacker doubled down on their scheme, utilizing the Jupiter deal with to push one other token, DCOIN.
Quickly after, a associated web page, JupiterDAO, issued a warning, urging customers to not work together with the fraudulent posts from the compromised essential account. “Don’t click on on any hyperlinks. Don’t copy-paste any CA’s,” it cautioned. Nonetheless, the injury had already been completed, with the worth of Jupiter’s native JUP token nosediving 12% quickly after information of the hack leaked.
Staff member Ben Liew additionally took to X, telling followers they had been working with completely different unspecified events to recuperate the profile. Hours later, the trade announced it had regained management of its deal with. It additionally reassured customers that every one buyer funds and treasury holdings had been safe, as they’re saved in multisig wallets. Moreover, it confused that no different communication channels had been breached, with the incident remoted to X.
Jupiter co-founder Meow later revealed that that they had been touring with one other key group member, Mei, on the similar time when the assault occurred. Nonetheless, Mei was unreachable due to poor Wi-Fi indicators, thus delaying the preliminary response to the state of affairs.
X Hacks Are Changing into Extra Prevalent
It’s not the primary time hackers have focused the social channel of a outstanding crypto entity or character. Within the final couple of months alone, there have been many such circumstances, together with an attack on former Division of Authorities Effectivity (D.O.G.E.) co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy’s X account final December. On that event, the hackers introduced a faux partnership between the duty pressure and the USUAL stablecoin mission, boosting its native token to an all-time excessive worth of $1.61.
In a more moderen incident, dangerous actors forcefully accessed the social accounts of three crypto projects, Foresight Ventures, Holoworld AI, and Litecoin, utilizing them to advertise a slew of bogus tokens. One other legal additionally hacked the Nasdaq Twitter web page to push a faux meme coin referred to as STONKS, with its market cap blowing as much as $80 million earlier than the scammers pulled the rug from underneath the ft of oblivious traders.
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