Crypto scammers target Indian Premier League team to promote Solana token

Hackers hijacked the Delhi Capitals’ X account, using the popular cricket franchise’s social media presence to push a scam Solana-based token.

Delhi Capitals, a cricket franchise team that competes in the popular Indian Premier League, fell victim to an X breach with hackers taking control of the account to advertise a Solana-based token with the ticker HACKER to the team’s over 2.6 million followers.

In the now-deleted posts, the bad actors took responsibility for the attack while announcing their intentions to “make profits” by targeting other X accounts in a bid to inflate the price of the HACKER token that was created a little over a day ago according to DEX screener data.

“We hack accounts on each account the token address will be posted and the token will pump,” the attackers wrote.

The attacker’s strategy is common in these sorts of attacks, where fraudsters exploit the large follower base of high-profile X accounts to promote crypto tokens. They artificially pump the token’s price and then sell off their pre-acquired holdings shortly after, leaving unsuspecting investors that rush in for a quick profit at a loss.

The culprits continued to make a series of similar posts, publicizing the scam token’s contract address, adding “search $HACKER to see our strength.” Shortly after, the Delhi Capitals management regained control of their account.

Meanwhile, searching X for the term “$HACKER” led to posts from another hacked account, sharing screenshots of similar attacks on the South Korean esports team T1 and other X accounts, all featuring the same message but with a different contract address.

However, the attacker’s efforts appeared to fall flat, with the HACKER token attracting little attention. At the time of writing, the scam token had a market cap of just $4,300 and only 46 transactions, most of which seemed to have been executed by the creators themselves shortly after the token’s launch.

Hackers keep finding ways around X’s security measures

Nevertheless, these attacks appear to be part of a growing trend where scammers target high-profile X accounts to promote deceitful crypto tokens—raising concerns about the platform’s security. The social media giant has yet to address this issue.

On Sep. 4, the X accounts of Lara and Tiffany Trump were hijacked simultaneously to mislead the public into buying a fake token themed around former president Donald Trump’s new decentralized finance project World Liberty Financial.

Just days earlier, French soccer star Kylian Mbappé fell victim to a similar breach and the attackers executed a pump-and-dump scheme using the MBAPPE token.