Nasdaq Official X Account Hacked to Pump Fake STONKS Memecoin

In a surprising event, hackers gained control of the Nasdaq X (Twitter) account and used it to boost the price of a meme coin called STONKS. This caused the value of the coin to quickly rise to $80 million, but it dropped just as fast within a few hours.

Hackers Pump STONKS Memecoin Using Nasdaq’s Name

The attackers associated a bogus X account as an affiliate to Nasdaq. Taking the disguise of the official Nasdaq profile, they posted a tweet recommending the newly released meme coin, STONKS. This was a deceptive strategy that exploited the attention that comes with Nasdaq’s image to attract the attention of investors who otherwise wouldn’t have taken note.

The recently created memecoin which looked like a clone of an existing token in the Solana ecosystem quickly climbed up its market ladder. Knowing that it was ‘competing against’ a multitude of meme coins eager to get into a ‘legitimate’ investment, the market capitalization of STONKS soared. 

Nevertheless, the buzz did not last long, and when the participants realized the whole thing was a scam, the value of the token also crashed.The link was quickly deactivated because of the fraudulent post, the fake affiliate account was also deactivated. 

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Nasdaq Scam Deceives Investors with Fake Cryptocurrency

Scammers often disguise themselves as prominent personalities or companies to popularise fake tokens, and this breach of the protocol is not unique to it. Accordingly, using the horizontal and vertical influence of well-known accounts with many followers, scammers increase the range of cheating and deceive more people.

This is why the attackers chose Nasdaq as their target since it is a leading financial organization that gives fake credibility to their work, along with a meme coin that imitates a real token to convince the users that it is an actual chance to make money. 

To companies such as Nasdaq, the successful attack shows that more needs to be done, specifically in regard to strong authentication controls like 2FA, ongoing account surveillance, and immediate remedial effort on the side of the company whenever unauthorized activity is ascertained.