Dogwifhat’s X account hacked to promote meme coins: report

The X account of dog-themed meme coin Dogwifhat was hijacked on Nov. 14 to promote several Solana-based tokens on the platform.

Across multiple now-deleted posts and a rebranded profile description, crypto scammers attempted to inflate the price of three different meme coins: popwifnut (POPWNUT), muu (MUU), and DogWifDoge (WIFD).

Eagle-eyed community members were quick to point out that the account was compromised, while web3 security firm Harpie confirmed the hack, urging X users to avoid engaging with the fraudulent posts.

Initially, attackers began posting about MUU, a meme coin created less than a month ago, along with its contract addresses, urging Dogwifcoin’s (WIF) over 115,000 followers to buy the meme coin. 

Shortly after the posts, the token, which had been trading sideways, reached a new all-time high, according to Dexscreener data. However, the rise was short-lived as the price dropped when bad actors liquidated their holdings.

The other tokens, WIFD and POPWNUT, both created less than 24 hours ago, shared a similar fate with massive price surges followed by a crash. At press time, both meme coins were down over 83% in the past six hours, with market caps of $12,000 and $37,000 respectively.

Dogwifhat developers had regained access to the account at the time of writing and reverted it to its original state, removing all traces of the scammers’ activity.

Despite the incident, WIF‘s price remained relatively stable, experiencing only a minor correction of just over 17% in the past 24 hours. The decline, along with that of several other meme coins, was primarily driven by BTC’s 2.4% drop.

The development comes just days after WIF was listed on the prominent crypto exchange Coinbase, a milestone that pushed the token past the $4 mark for the first time since April and helped it post gains of over 50% in the last 7 days.

This incident highlights a recurring trend of scammers infiltrating X accounts of prominent crypto projects to deceive cryptocurrency investors. On September 19, the X account of the virtual reality-focused project Decentraland was hacked to promote a fake airdrop that was originally a phishing campaign draining victims’ funds via approval phishing.

At the same time, blockchain investigator ZachXBT also warned that several major X accounts, including Yahoo News UK, Lenovo India, Money Control, and People, had been compromised to promote similar schemes.