On August 21, cybercriminals hacked McDonald’s official Instagram account to pull off a scam that netted them over $700,000 in Solana (SOL).
The hackers promoted a fake memecoin named after the restaurant’s purple mascot, Grimace.
Screenshots shared on social media show that they published multiple posts about the token, falsely presenting it as a “McDonald’s experiment on Solana” to the account’s 5.1 million followers.
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Blockchain analytics service Bubblemaps reported that the hackers acquired 75% of the Grimace token’s total supply through Solana’s memecoin marketplace, pump.fun. They spread these tokens across roughly 100 different wallets.
After the promotion, the market capitalization of the Grimace memecoin soared to $25 million in just 30 minutes. However, it dropped to around $650,000 as the hackers dumped their holdings.
Bubblemaps confirmed that the hackers profited significantly from the scam. They even changed McDonald’s Instagram bio to brag about their success, writing, “You just have been rug pulled <…>, thank you for the $700,000 in Solana.”
All fraudulent posts and the edited bio have since been removed, as McDonald’s has regained control of its Instagram account. The company described the breach as an “isolated incident”, assured that the issue has been resolved, and apologized to its followers for any offensive content posted during the hack.
This incident highlights the growing risks of social media platforms being exploited for crypto scams, serving as a reminder of the need to be cautious.
Similarly, in July, the X accounts Doja Cat, Sydney Sweeney, 50 Cent, and Hulk Hogan were hacked to promote memecoins named after them.
Gode is a Web3 Market Analyst who researches the most important industry events and interprets how they affect the wider Web3 space. Her formal education in media culture & digital rhetoric allows her to employ a methodical approach to evaluating critical Web3 news data, including large-scale events and the wider social sentiment within the ecosystem.
Gode is a mutilingual professional, having studied in multiple universities all across Europe. This allows her to have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to analyze Web3 social sentiments spanning different cultures and languages and, in turn, develop a much deeper understanding of how the Web3 space is growing within different communities. With the rest of her team, Gode works to identify crucial crypto news patterns and provide unbiased and data-driven information.
Gode’s passions include working and communicating with people, and when she’s not researching Web3 news, she spends her time traveling and watching true crime documentaries.
