Jupiter Recovers Hijacked X Account After Scammers Promoted Fraudulent Meme Coin

Solana-based dex aggregator Jupiter has recovered its X account after it was hijacked by cryptocurrency scammers who promoted a fraudulent meme coin.

Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Jupiter has announced the recovery of its X account, which was briefly hijacked by cryptocurrency scammers on Monday.

The scammers used the compromised account to promote a fraudulent meme coin, which was quickly deleted by Jupiter's team.

According to a Feb. 6 X post, Jupiter reassured users that no funds were ever at risk. The exchange confirmed that all customer and treasury assets remain secure in multisig wallets.

The attack was limited to Jupiter’s X account, with no other communication channels affected, the post added.

The hack transpired during the late hours of Feb. 5, with several community members quickly sounding the alarm about the suspicious activity.

In a now-deleted post, Jupiter Mobile's X account warned users not to click any links or purchase tokens promoted by the compromised main account.

The scammers used the opportunity to promote a meme coin theme around Jupiter’s cat mascot with the ticker MEOW. According to community posts, the token purportedly surged to a $30 million market cap within seconds before the token's developer sold their holdings, wiping out all gains.

Beanie, the pseudonymous founder of crypto venture capital firm GM Capital, used the incident to highlight the irony of protocols being trusted with billions in liquidity yet failing to secure their social media accounts a "recurring paradox" in the industry.

“Traders lost millions instantly on this Jupiter account hack. Literally in a matter of minutes,” he noted.

The community wasn't too pleased about the whole situation, calling out Jupiter for not securing its account properly. Some were also frustrated that, even though Jupiter assured funds were safe, the losses from the scam couldn't be recovered.

Others praised the team’s quick response and transparency about the breach, with one user stating that the incident reinforced their trust in the Jupiter team.

The incident may have added to some selling pressure on JUP, the platform’s native token, which had dropped over 5% during the aftermath.

Crypto scammers have long exploited the X accounts of prominent blockchain projects, celebrities, and public figures to push fraudulent tokens and phishing schemes.

Last month, Breaking Bad star Dean Norris became the latest victim after his X account was used to promote a sham token based on his persona. Scammers managed to inflate the token’s market caps to as high as $8.4 million at its peak before offloading their pre-acquired holdings.

Just days before, the official account of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was locked due to what appeared to be a similar incident.