McDonald’s lost control over its Instagram account, leading hackers to mint a small fortune
Hackers recently exploited McDonald’s official Instagram account to carry on a scam that gave them over $700,000 in Solana. The incident occurred on August 21, when the fast-food giant’s social media page was compromised and used to promote a fraudulent memecoin, based on McDonald’s purple mascot, Grimace.
The hackers posted a series of messages on the hijacked Instagram account, advertising the so-called Grimace memecoin as a “McDonald’s experiment on Solana,” targeting the brand’s 5.1 million followers. The promotion quickly gained traction, causing the token’s market capitalization to surge from just a few thousand dollars to an astonishing $25 million within 30 minutes, according to data from DexScreener.
@McDonalds official Instagram was hacked to promote the $GRIMACE scam #crypto based on #solana. pic.twitter.com/iBlkkwIQV3
— Timo Bullt – Crypto Insiders (@timo_bult) August 21, 2024
The scheme was meticulously planned. Blockchain analytics service Bubblemaps revealed that the hacker initially used the Solana memecoin deployer pump.fun to acquire 75% of the total Grimace token supply. These tokens were then dispersed across approximately 100 different wallets. As the token’s value skyrocketed due to the fake endorsements, the hacker strategically dumped their holdings, causing the coin’s value to plummet as quickly as it had risen. Within 40 minutes, the memecoin’s value crashed to around $650,000.
In the aftermath of the scam, the hackers updated the bio on McDonald’s Instagram account, boasting about their ill-gotten gains. The bio read, “Sorry mah n-gga you have just been rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w thank you for the $700,000 in Solana.” The malicious posts and bio have since been removed, and McDonald’s has restored the account to normal.
In response, McDonald’s issued a statement acknowledging the breach, referring to it as an “isolated incident” and apologized to its followers for any offensive content posted during the hack. The company assured the public that the issue had been resolved.
