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On December 2nd, an official X account of a major Filipino cryptocurrency exchange Coins.ph was hacked. The hackers leveraged the platform to drop a new token called $COINSPH, with the false claim of operating under the pump.fun of the Solana network.
Scammers claimed that some social media accounts an intermediary tokens similar to an ETF for $COINSPH and demanded people interact with a specific contract address.
A Phishing Scam in Disguise
The hackers by tricking used misunderstanding of low fees and the high speed of Solana to make it look like a genuine MLM. The posts demanded a direct purchase of the token with the name tag ‘crypto trend compass’, and ordered users to ‘buy $COINSPH now, be an early supporter’.
Luckily for Coins.ph, the scamming only occurred in its X account, and there was no misinformation about the incident on its official page on Facebook or anywhere else.
Coins.ph’s Swift Response
Coins.ph quickly addressed the situation, removing the compromised messages by 12:33 PM on the same day. The exchange warned its users against it and requested they not engage with the token or the contract address.
To calm the angry customers, Coins.ph explained that the main servers and operations were not violated and unharmed during the attack. Towards that end, the exchange stated that it would continue to improve the security that was in place to prevent further molestation.
This incident brings to focus threats of cyber criminals attacking social media platforms with the aim of accessing cryptocurrency. Cautions need new announcements that need to be checked and verified through other authentic sources before acting on them and time-sensitive promotions.