The official account of the Nasdaq on X (previously Twitter) was briefly hacked, and the cybercriminals used it to promote a fake memecoin called STONKS. The hackers then connected a fictitious affiliate account to Nasdaq’s profile and had it retweet a tweet that advertised the token.
The scam token was launched on the same day and seemed to be a copycat of a pre-existing memecoin with the same name on Solana, which holds the IP for the meme.
Well, it turns out that despite being a scam, just a few minutes after launching, STONKS quickly got up to 80 million in market cap. But this hype was brief, and its value dropped just a few days later, crypto-tracking platform DEXscreener reports .
This is part of a larger trend of hackers hijacking high-profile accounts on X to promote scam tokens. Such attacks have landed in the pockets of celebrities’ businesses and institutions, causing financial and reputational ruin.
The Nasdaq has not yet released a public comment on the breach. We have learned the importance of putting strong security measures in place, especially for those big accounts with huge amounts of reach.
