Jupiter, a Solana-based decentralized exchange aggregator, had its X account briefly compromised, with the attacker using it to promote scam tokens, leading to market turbulence.

The team has since regained control of the page, confirming that no funds or customer data were affected.

Hack Leads to Token Scam Promotion

The drama kicked off in the early hours of February 6 when an unknown attacker took over Jupiter’s X account, which boasts more than half a million followers. They then started posting about a newly launched meme coin called $MEOW, with the name a play on the platform co-founder’s pseudonym, Meow.

On-chain records show that within minutes of the promotion, the fake token’s market value flew past $20 million as it attracted unsuspecting investors. 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.

Soon after, a related page, JupiterDAO, issued a warning, urging users not to interact with the fraudulent posts from the compromised main account. “Do not click on any links. Do not copy-paste any CA’s,” it cautioned. Nonetheless, the damage had already been done, with the price of Jupiter’s native JUP token nosediving 12% soon after news of the hack leaked.

Team member Ben Liew also took to X, telling followers they were working with different unspecified parties to recover the profile. Hours later, the exchange announced it had regained control of its handle. It also reassured users that all customer funds and treasury holdings were secure, as they are stored in multisig wallets. Additionally, it stressed that no other communication channels had been breached, with the incident isolated to X.

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 is not the first time hackers have targeted the social channel of a prominent crypto entity or personality. 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. On that occasion, the hackers announced a fake partnership between the task force and the USUAL stablecoin project, boosting its native token to an all-time high price of $1.61.

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.