The X account of Delhi Capitals, a popular franchise cricket team in the Indian Premier League (IPL), was hacked on September 10 with attackers using it to promote a fraudulent cryptocurrency token called “HACKER”.
The perpetrators leveraged the account’s large following of 2.6 million to advertise the token, which is based on the Solana blockchain, in an attempt to artificially inflate its price.
Delhi Capitals Account Compromised in Crypto Scam
The hackers posted multiple messages from the compromised account, encouraging followers to buy the HACKER token by sharing its contract address.
The attackers openly stated their goal to profit from the token manipulation, even suggesting that they would target other high-profile accounts in the future.
This fraudulent scheme follows a typical pattern seen in social media hacks: scammers artificially inflate the price of a token through deceptive promotions and sell their holdings once the price peaks, leaving investors with significant losses when the token crashes.
At the time of reporting, the contract address associated with the $HACKER ticker, posted on the Delhi Capitals’ account, has been removed from DexScreener.
However, another $HACKER token, created a week earlier and also promoted by the scammers, saw minimal engagement, recording only one transaction and a market cap of just $3,000, according to data from DexScreener.
Growing Trend of Social Media Hacks Targeting High-Profile Accounts
The breach of the Delhi Capitals’ account is part of a wider trend of social media hacks aimed at promoting fraudulent cryptocurrencies.
On August 29, 2024, a cryptocurrency investor lost over $1 million after the X account of French soccer star Kylian Mbappé was hacked to promote a fake meme coin called $MBAPPE.
Earlier incidents also included the hacking of the official X account of the heavy metal band Metallica in June 2024, which was used to promote the $METAL token, resulting in over $10 million in trading volume before the token collapsed.
Additionally, MicroStrategy’s X account was compromised earlier this year, leading to a phishing scam involving the “MSTR token” and resulting in an estimated $500,000 in losses.
These incidents expose potential vulnerabilities in X’s security protocols, raising concerns about the platform’s ability to safeguard high-profile accounts.
While X has yet to address these security concerns comprehensively, the growing number of similar incidents reflects a serious vulnerability that could impact many users and organizations.
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