Jupiter Exchange Hack: MEOW-tastic Scam Tokens Unleashed!

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Oh, dear me! The folks over at Jupiter Exchange, a Solana-based decentralized exchange aggregator, had a bit of a kerfuffle when their X account got hacked. The ne’er-do-wells used it to promote some scam tokens, causing quite a ruckus in the market.

But fear not, dear readers! The Jupiter team quickly regained control of the account and confirmed that no funds or customer data were affected. Phew!

Hack Leads to Token Scam Promotion

Now, let me tell you about the drama that unfolded on February 6th. An unknown attacker took over Jupiter’s X account, which has more than half a million followers, and started promoting a new meme coin called $MEOW. The name is a play on the platform co-founder’s pseudonym, Meow.

Within minutes of the promotion, the fake token’s market value skyrocketed to over $20 million as unsuspecting investors flocked to it. However, the bad actor soon drained its liquidity pool, leaving traders unable to sell their holdings.

Interestingly, as panic started spreading, the attacker doubled down on their scheme, using the Jupiter handle to push another token, DCOIN. Meanwhile, a related page, JupiterDAO, issued a warning, urging users not to interact with the fraudulent posts from the compromised main account.

Despite the warning, the damage had already been done, with the price of Jupiter’s native JUP token plummeting 12% soon after news of the hack leaked. The team member, Ben Liew, took to X to inform followers that they were working with different unspecified parties to recover the profile. Hours later, the exchange announced it had regained control of its handle.

Jupiter co-founder Meow later revealed that they had been traveling with another key team member, Mei, at the same time when the attack happened. However, Mei was unreachable because of poor Wi-Fi signals, thus delaying the initial response to the situation.

X Hacks Are Becoming More Prevalent

It seems that hackers have a penchant for targeting the social channels of prominent crypto entities and personalities. In the last couple of months alone, there have been many such cases, including an attack on former Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy’s X account last December.

In a more recent incident, bad actors forcefully accessed the social accounts of three crypto projects, Foresight Ventures, Holoworld AI, and Litecoin, using them to promote a slew of bogus tokens. Another criminal also hacked the Nasdaq Twitter page to push a fake meme coin called STONKS, with its market cap blowing up to $80 million before the scammers pulled the rug from under the feet of oblivious investors.

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2025-02-06 23:23