Investing

Official Twitter Account of Indian State Governor Hacked to Promote XRP Scam

Tim Fries

Published: March 1, 2023 10:15 pm

The official account of the residency of the governor of the Indian state Madhya Pradesh has been seemingly hacked in order to promote a cryptocurrency-related scam. Based on the account’s activity, the hack occurred on February 28th, around 4 PM EST—around 2:30 AM in Bhopal, the capital of the state.

Official Account of Governor of Madhya Pradesh Used to Promote Crypto Scam

This Tuesday, around 4 PM EST, the official account of the Governor of Madhya Pradesh started responding to numerous cryptocurrency-related posts on Twitter claiming that Ripple Labs’ CEO Brad Garlinghouse initiated an XRP airdrop. The posts, which are the same across the replies, also claim that the XRP token is “ready to huge PUMP”.

The scam comments are also accompanied by a large number of replies thanking the scammers for the announcement—considering that the replies are also identical, it is likely that all accounts involved are either hacked, or bot accounts created specifically for the purpose.

While the compromised account has a following has nearly 140 thousand followers, it is not very likely to trick too many community members thanks to the combination of poor grammar and the fact that government officials usually don’t promote cryptocurrency airdrops. The scam is likely intended to capitalize on the increased recognition of Ripple Labs and its XRP token due to its ongoing legal battle with the SEC.

Neither Brad Garlinghouse nor Ripple labs have commented on the matter by the time of writing.

Robinhood and Azuki Also Hacked In 2023

The hack of the Twitter account of the governor of Madhya Pradesh is not the first such high-profile occurrence in 2023. In a span of just a few days in January, both the official account of the online broker Robinhood and of the NFT project Azuki were similarly compromised.

On January 25th, Robinhood’s account started posting a fraudulent announcement of a new token on the Binance smart chain. Similarly, on January 27th, scammers apparently attempted to take advantage of Azuki’s new project, the virtual city of Hilumia by promoting a fake giveaway. Both hacks were resolved within an hour.

Additionally, unlike Robinhood which first resolved the issue, several social media accounts related to Azuki immediately created posts warning their communities of the attacks. Additionally, the online sleuth ZachXBT discovered that the hackers that temporarily hijacked Azuki only netted around $7,000.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist