Hackers have impersonated the Saudi crown prince to launch and promote fraudulent memecoin cryptocurrencies.
In a tweet on 17 February, an X user warned that the Saudi Law Conference Administration’s official X account was hacked, a statement that the conference later confirmed to be true.
The hackers took over the conference’s account which is managed by the Saudi crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman and posted ‘Launch of Official Saudi Arabia Memecoin 15:00 UTC.”
What gave it away
In this hack as in any other high-profile X hack for promoting crypto scams, many X users had fallen for the deception without checking.
The scam was obvious though, as there was no official government announcement, nor was there clear information on the project’s tokenomics or the underlying utility.
Also, the Saudi Law Conference promptly released a statement warning the public that its X handle had been taken over by bad actors. Part of the statement read:
“We confirm that we are urgently working to regain control of the account and disclaim all responsibility for any unauthorized posts made during this period. We also apologize to our followers for any inconvenience this may cause and urge everyone to exercise caution and refrain from engaging with any suspicious content posted through the account until further notice.”
The fraudsters had however promoted two scams — the “Official Saudi Arabia Memecoin” and “FALCON Memecoin” — and had shared purported contract addresses for the two projects.
One of many cases
Cases of scammers hacking high-profile persons to promote scam crypto projects is an old tactic found among hackers.
Just recently, the BBC journalist Nick Robinson was hacked and used to promote cryptocurrency through a phishing attack.
As confirmed by a security expert, such attackers target public figures with a large following to exploit their followers who often fall for the scams before realizing it.
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