The Securities and Exchange Commission, among other entities, has been the victim of X account hacks, as has the Cardano Foundation.
On December 8, a threat actor compromised the X account of the Cardano Foundation. The actor was promoting a fake “ADAsol” token and claiming that the Cardano Foundation would cease support for Cardano’s native token, ADA, due to a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The fraudulent ADAsol token generated approximately $500,000 in trading volume and rapidly crashed by 99% before Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson confirmed the hack in a social media post.
At this time, the ADAsol scam post and the subsequent notice of an impending lawsuit from the SEC have been removed.
The Cardano Foundation is currently resolving the compromised account, and the hack has not impacted any other components of the Cardano ecosystem. Despite this, users should exercise caution and refrain from clicking on any links from the Cardano Foundation X account until further notice.
X account hacks are exceedingly prevalent
Threat actors have compromised social media pages and posted fraudulent links to numerous entities, including the Cardano Foundation.
Compound Finance’s X account was compromised in December 2023. The malicious actor employed the social media page to distribute phishing links to a website resembling the protocol’s website and promoted fraudulent COMP tokens. Cryptocurrency would be extracted from unsuspecting users by clicking any links.
In October 2024, Symbiotic, a restaking protocol, was the victim of an X account hack. The hacker published a checklist that purported to award users points for engaging with the post, a feature comparable to Airdrop checklists—the links directed to a phishing site that would steal legitimate Symbiotic tokens from wallets.
In October 2024, the X account of the popular restaking protocol Eigenlayer was compromised. The threat actor utilized the account to advertise a fraudulent airdrop campaign.
On October 29, the founder of the Truth Terminal AI account was also hacked. The hacker seized control of the account to promote a fraudulent memecoin.
In November 2024, rapper Wiz Khalifa’s X account was hacked to promote a fabricated celebrity memecoin known as WIZ. The token was presented to users as a genuine memecoin from the musical artist, but it was not associated with Khalifa in any capacity.