An unknown attacker pulled off a brazen scam by hacking the official X accounts of Elon Musk's projects — @SpaceXAI (2 million followers) and @Starlink (1.6 million followers). Using access to these pages, the hacker launched an aggressive advertising campaign for the $SCATMAN token, leading to a classic pump and dump scheme. As a result, the attacker withdrew approximately $125,000 in Ether (ETH).
Timeline of the attack
After taking over the accounts, the hacker began posting messages on behalf of the character Sam Catman (verified profile @SamCatmanRH). These posts were then reposted from the hacked SpaceXAI and Starlink pages, instantly garnering tens of thousands of views, likes, and reposts. The $SCATMAN token was traded in the SCATMAN/WETH pair on Uniswap V2. The chart shows a vertical price spike, followed by a 98.38% crash within 24 hours.
Key token parameters at the time of recording: liquidity — $3,900; market capitalization — ~$1.4 million; fully diluted valuation (FDV) — ~$1.4 million; total trading volume — $5.7 million; total number of transactions — ~45,000. These figures indicate extremely low liquidity and high risk for investors who fell for the promotion.
How the hacker withdrew funds
The main profit was extracted in two stages. First, 10 trillion SCATMAN were received into the attacker's wallet via the rebalance function. Then this volume was sold in a single transaction on Uniswap V2, yielding 59.0856 ETH (~$108,366 at the time). A second controlled wallet sold 59,276,870 SCATMAN for 14.7296 ETH (~$27,000). In total, the hacker withdrew about $125,000, with gas fees remaining symbolic (less than $0.01 per transaction). Analysts tracked the attacker's wallets: 0xfee50d4ce48f2d05f520ce04c875647e4870a8ba and 0xdd9f6d3e16ebda7f35cb694ceadb50af3eebba89.
Expert opinion from Cryptalist: This incident is yet another reminder that even accounts with millions of followers are not immune to hacking. The pump and dump scheme on memecoins using social engineering remains one of the most effective for attackers. Investors should critically evaluate any advertising campaigns, even if they come from seemingly authoritative sources. Security in cryptocurrency begins with personal vigilance.