The X account of rapper Wiz Khalifa was hacked yesterday. The hackers used his account to promote a fake cryptocurrency called “$WIZ” to his 35.7 million followers.
This fake coin quickly gained attention and reached a value of $3.4 million right after it launched. But within an hour, its value fell to less than $28,000 as people started to sell their tokens.
The hackers posted a message saying that Khalifa was “working with my team to drop $WIZ for all the crypto fans.” This misleading information alarmed many in the cryptocurrency community.
However, ZachXBT, a blockchain investigator on X, warned people not to buy the token, stating that the same hacker had previously taken over Andy Ayrey’s account on October 29. According to previous report, the attackers used it to promote fake tokens and made about $1.5 million from their scam.
After Khalifa’s account was hacked, data showed that two main wallets bought over 155 million WIZ tokens for $19,100 and later sold them for about $160,000 profit.
The exact method used to hack Khalifa’s account is not confirmed yet. However, it might be related to a technique called SIM swapping. This is where hackers take control of a person’s phone number, allowing them to reset passwords and access accounts.
In Ayrey’s case, the hackers used this same method to promote a token called Infinite Backrooms (IB), which caused its value to jump to $25 million before they quickly sold off their tokens.
At this time, it is still unclear if Khalifa has regained control of his account, but the posts about the scam coin have been deleted
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