Hackers compromised Pump.fun’s X account to promote fake pump memecoins, scamming investors out of nearly $690,000.
The crypto community quickly flagged the fraud, and the platform’s founder warned users to avoid interactions until recovery.
The X account for the Solana-based memecoin Launchpad Pump.fun was hacked and used to push fake cryptocurrencies, such as a “official” PUMP governance token. Analysts who work with the blockchain think this attack is linked to other recent X account hacks.
Hackers release the PUMP meme coin for fun.
Hackers took over Pump.fun’s official X account on Wednesday and used it to push different tokens. The account that was hacked put several contract addresses (CA) for different memecoins and then deleted them.
The hackers initially shared the contact address of PUMP, the “official Pump.fun governance token,” stating that “democracy has never been this degen” and that they would be rewarding their “OG DEGENS.”
The crypto community quickly called out memecoin as a scam and warned others about what they thought was an account breach.
Users were warned by the blockchain analytics company Bubblemaps, which said that PUMP was “heavily bundled and will dump” because just two clusters held 60% of its supply.
Alon Cohen, the founder of Pump.fun, stated that the X account had been hacked and told users not to interact with it until it was fixed.
Dethective, an on-chain detective, said that hackers stole about $600,000 from the token just minutes after it was released. The expert said that the scammers’ method was to post the CA of a bundled scam token and scam investors before deleting the proof.
The attackers also pushed OG, Extract Protocol (EXAI), and Pump.fun Hacked (HACKED) along with the fake PUMP token and stole another $90,000 from these memecoins.
According to Dethective, some buyers kept buying tokens even after the rug was pulled out from under them several times. At its peak, the market value of one memecoin reached $1.5 million.
The malicious actors asked the crypto community whether they should create a “legit token on Pump.fun” and call it “Hackeddotfun.” They “promised” to pump the memecoin to a market capitalization of $100 million, assuring it wouldn’t “be a bundle” and would be launched through the platform before deleting the posts.
