Crypto news and updates media platform, Watcher Guru, confirmed its X account has been breached by a hacker that spreads unauthorized posts across all its channels.
In a recent X post, the crypto-focused media platform warned its nearly 3 million social media followers that a hacker has breached the account. The team is still investigating the hack and is currently in contact with the X support team.
“Our X account has been hacked and the previous post (now deleted) was posted by a hacker. We have 2FA enabled and have taken extreme measures to avoid hacks,” said the account in a recent post.
On March 21, at around 2:05 AM UTC, the hacker uploaded an unauthorized post on the Watcher Guru account that claimed payment firm SWIFT was close to securing an agreement with Ripple to use XRP (XRP) for cross-border payments. However, the account clarified that the post was not made by the team, but rather a hacker that managed to take control of the account.
The Watcher Guru explained that since they have a bot that automatically reposts all information from the X account to the media platform’s other social media channels, the fake post was also shared to Watcher Guru’s Telegram, Facebook and Discord.
“All unauthorized posts have been removed, and our account has been secured. We are contacting X for further clarification,” said Watcher Guru.
How did the hacker access Watcher Guru’s account?
The media platform’s team suspects the hack is related to a fake X link sent to their Telegram account on March 5. The team believes it was a social engineering technique to gain access to the official account. They claimed the link was “formatted in a strange way” because it had a “token” query string that does not normally appear in X links.
“We did not think much of it since it was an official link, but sent a message to X’s head of Cyber Security @cstanley just in case. However, we did not receive a response,” wrote the team.
Although the team cannot confirm the hack and the strange link are related, the same thing had occurred to another crypto-focused news outlet, DB News. Despite both accounts deploying two-factor authentication, the hacker was still able to access their official accounts.
At press time, Watcher Guru stated that it has not been able to determine the exact source or method behind the hack. Though, the team promised to take measures to avoid further hacks and will provide followers with an update when there are more details.
In recent years, many X accounts have fallen victim to hacks. Most of them were exploited to promote memecoins launched just minutes after the post was shared by the attackers. In February, the Instagram account of luxury brand Dior was hacked to promote a fake Solana (SOL)-based Dior memecoin, which reached a $280,000 market cap before crashing 90% after the post was deleted.
