The Cardano Foundation’s X account was compromised by a malicious actor on Dec. 8. The hacker promoted a fake “ADAsol” token and falsely claimed that the Cardano Foundation would cease supporting ADA (<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/ada-price-index" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="https://cointelegraph.com/ada-price-index">ADA</a>), the network’s native cryptocurrency.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson confirmed the hack in a social media post, but not before the fraudulent ADAsol token generated about $500,000 in trading volume and rapidly crashed by 99%.
Both the ADAsol scam post and the subsequent notice regarding a potential SEC lawsuit had been removed as of the time of writing.
The Cardano Foundation is working to fix the compromised account, and it said no other parts of the Cardano ecosystem were affected by the hack. Despite this, users are advised to exercise caution and not click on any links from the Cardano Foundation X account until further notice.
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 <img alt="Cardano Foundation X account hacked, scam links posted, then removed" src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-12/0193a777-a5dc-766e-9887-dabc293da5d5" title="">
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 One of the fraudulent posts from the compromised Cardano Foundation X account. Source: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://t.me/investigations/189" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" text="null" title="https://t.me/investigations/189">ZackXBT</a>
 </figcaption>
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Related: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/cardano-price-gains-88-is-the-ada-rally-just-getting-started" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">Cardano price gains 88% — Is the ADA rally just getting started?</a>
<h2 id="x-account-hacks-are-all-too-common">X account hacks are all too common</h2>
The Cardano Foundation is not the only entity to experience threat actors compromising social media pages and posting fraudulent links.
In Dec. 2023, <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/compound-finance-x-twitter-account-hacked-posted-scam-link" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">Compound Finance’s X account was hacked</a>. The malicious actor used the social media page to post phishing links to a site resembling the protocol’s website to advertise fraudulent COMP tokens. Clicking on any of the links would drain crypto from unsuspecting users.
Symbiotic — a restaking protocol — <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/symbioticx-hack-malware-svg-crypto-sec" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">experienced an X account hack</a> in October. The hacker’s post resembled and airdrop checklist claiming to give users points for interacting with the post. The links led to a phishing site that would steal legitimate Symbiotic tokens from wallets.
Popular restaking protocol EigenLayer’s <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/eigenlayer-x-account-compromised-malicious-airdrop-link" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">X account was also compromised</a> in October. The threat actor used the account to promote a fake airdrop campaign.
On Oct. 29, the founder of the Truth Terminal AI’s account <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/truth-terminal-founder-x-account-hacked-promotes-scam-memecoin" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">was also hacked</a>. The hacker took control of the account to market a fraudulent memecoin.
More recently, in November, rapper <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/wiz-khalifa-x-account-hacked-promote-sham-memecoin" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">WiKhalifa’s's X account was hacked</a> to shill a fake celebrity memecoin called WIZ. The token was presented to users as a legitimate memecoin from the musical artist, though it was not affiliated with Khalifa in any way.
Magazine: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/pythia-finance-drained-53k-crypto-sec/" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">2 auditors miss $27M Penpie flaw, Pythia’s ‘claim rewards’ bug: Crypto-Sec</a>

Cardano Foundation X account hacked, scam links posted, then removed

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