An investigation has revealed a connection between the creators of a newly launched memecoin and the recent hacking of a cryptocurrency influencer’s account. The analysis, conducted by anonymous investigator ZachXBT, discovered that the Sol team, responsible for the Solana-based memecoin CAT, compromised the account of crypto influencer Gigantic-Cassocked-Rebirth (GCR) on May 26th. Their intention was to manipulate the prices of specific coins.
The team reportedly manipulated the launch of their own coin on May 24th, allowing them to gain control of more than 63% of the CAT supply. They then proceeded to sell over $5 million worth of the CAT memecoin and divided the profits among multiple wallets. Part of these funds were later deposited into Hyperliquid for trading.
Minutes before the hack took place, the attackers opened long positions of $2.3 million on ORDI and $1 million on Ether.fi (ETHFI). A long position in trading is a bet that the price of an asset will increase in the future. Using GCR’s compromised account, the attacker made a post about ORDI, causing a temporary spike in the token’s price and resulting in a profit of approximately $34,000. A second post was made targeting the ETHFI token, but this time the market did not react as expected. After losing $3,500, the hacker closed the position.
ZachXBT expressed his opinion on the outcome of the attack, stating that the scammers displayed a lack of intelligence in their execution. It is currently unknown if this group is responsible for other similar attacks on crypto influencers in recent days.
According to ZachXBT’s analysis, the breach of the influencer’s account was caused by a SIM swapping attack. This type of attack involves tricking a mobile carrier into transferring the victim’s phone number to a new SIM card controlled by the attacker.
Malicious actors have discovered memecoins to be a lucrative target for attacks. Common strategies include promoting a memecoin to artificially inflate its price and then selling tokens at the peak, or draining all funds from the liquidity pool unexpectedly.
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