Home Nasdaq X account compromised to promote scam meme coin

Nasdaq X account compromised to promote scam meme coin

The official account of Nasdaq on the X social media platform was briefly compromised with hackers using the attack to promote a fake meme coin known as STONKS. 

In a familiar scam that we have seen before, the malicious actors then connected a scam affiliate account to the stock market index profile, resulting in an X repost to promote the supposed token. 

The attack appeared to have the desired effect, with the fictitious STONKS rising fast to 80 million in market cap. What makes it even more deceitful is that a pre-existing meme coin with the same name launched on the same day on Solana, but that was the legitimate version, holding all of the IP rights. 

The boom of the copycat version proved to be short-lived, with its value crashing just days later, as reported by the crypto tracking platform, DEXscreener.

High-profile hijack victim

Twelve months ago, hackers were known to be increasingly targeting prominent accounts on Elon Musk’s social platform to enable these links to crypto scams as well as dropping drainer links. 

A crypto drainer is a form of malware that targets cryptocurrency wallets by tricking the victim into consenting to a malicious transaction.

Google subsidiary Mandiant, a cyber intelligence company bought for $5.4bn, was a high-profile hijack victim last January when it was used to distribute a fake airdrop which subsequently applied the drain.

On X, the fake STONKS post has been removed with the account suspended, while Nasdaq is yet to release a public comment on the incident.

Image credit: Via Midjourney

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Graeme Hanna
Tech Journalist

Graeme Hanna is a full-time, freelance writer with significant experience in online news as well as content writing. Since January 2021, he has contributed as a football and news writer for several mainstream UK titles including The Glasgow Times, Rangers Review, Manchester Evening News, MyLondon, Give Me Sport, and the Belfast News Letter. Graeme has worked across several briefs including news and feature writing in addition to other significant work experience in professional services. Now a contributing news writer at ReadWrite.com, he is involved with pitching relevant content for publication as well as writing engaging tech news stories.

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