A hacker made off with over $135,000 after hijacking the X accounts of SpaceX and Starlink to advertise a meme coin.
The profiles have been used to shill a Robinhood-based token that briefly hit a $2 million market cap earlier than crashing to virtually zero.
SpaceX and Starlink Fall Sufferer to Compromise
Screenshots circulating on social media present each accounts reposting content material from the token’s profile, with the posts that includes a Sam Altman (SCATMAN) meme coin and tags claiming they have been related to SpaceX.
On-chain knowledge exhibits the hacker created 10 trillion tokens and bought the whole stash, changing it into 59 Ether (ETH) price round $108,000 shortly after the posts went dwell.
In accordance with Lookonchain, a separate pockets linked to the attacker made one other sale of 59.28 million SCATMAN tokens for 14.7 ETH, valued at roughly $27,000, bringing the whole revenue to roughly $135,000. The on-chain analytics platform additionally recognized the 2 addresses utilized by the hacker.
Per GeckoTerminal knowledge, SCATMAN’s market cap surged to over $2 million earlier than being instantly rug-pulled. In the meantime, each corporations have since deleted the faux posts and regained management of their accounts.
Rug Pulls Stay Frequent in Crypto Area
Distinguished social media account takeovers have turn into frequent within the crypto area, lots of which have been used to pump and dump low-cap cryptocurrencies.
For example, Scroll co-founder Ye Chen’s X account was hijacked in January 2026, with attackers impersonating platform workers and sending phishing messages about copyright violations that tricked crypto leaders into clicking malicious hyperlinks.
A few months later, Pepe creator Matt Furie’s account was used to advertise a rip-off token. Across the identical time, WinRAR’s official account was additionally compromised to push a faux Solana meme coin to its followers.
Essentially the most notable breach got here in Could when Keith Gill, popularly referred to as Roaring Kitty, had his dormant account breached. On this case, hackers launched Purple Kitten Crew (RKC) on Solana and walked away with greater than $600,000 in half an hour.
Every case adopted a sample seen in crypto a number of occasions, the place influencers create hype, builders money out, and retail merchants are left coping with losses.
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