Massive Twitter Hack Tries, Fails to Promote Crypto Scam in ‘Most Incompetent’ Hack of the Year

Hackers targeted a number of notable Twitter (aka X) users on Wednesday, apparently hijacking the accounts of brands and celebrities to post tweets pushing a dodgy meme coin. But the Solana token didn’t get much traction.

Computer brand Lenovo’s India division, film director Oliver Stone, Yahoo News UK, and Brazilian soccer player Neymar Jr. were just some of the prominent users that appeared to be hacked to push the scam, advertising a token with the ticker HACKED.

“INTRODUCING $HACKED ON SOLANA,” the tweets read. “On each account we hack we publish the token address so we pump it and make profits together.”

HACKED is a new meme coin running on Solana, the crypto network behind the fifth biggest digital coin, SOL. Some of the Twitter accounts have since deleted the tweets.

Pseudonymous crypto sleuth ZachXBT first published details of the compromised accounts, noting that the trading volume of the cryptocurrency being pushed was tiny and that hackers probably only made away with $8,000 in the operation, despite the scale of the attack.

The coin appears to have only generated $278,000 worth of trading volume so far, with a market cap of just $5,700 as of this writing after the price dumped 96% in an hour. “Strong contender for most incompetent hacker of the year,” ZachXBT tweeted.

Solana’s network has a number of use cases, but most recently has become the leading chain to mint new tokens—including meme coins, or highly volatile cryptocurrencies based around internet jokes, celebrities, or real-world events.

A new platform, Pump.fun, launched in early 2024, allows anyone to make new meme coins without technical knowledge or substantial costs.

However, hackers have targeted high-profile accounts on Twitter with crypto scams for years. Back in 2020, scammers hit a number of celebrity and brand accounts—including former President Barack Obama, Apple, Uber, and rapper Kanye West—to push a Bitcoin scheme.

Edited by Andrew Hayward