Highlights:
- McDonald’s Instagram was hacked to promote the Solana memecoin GRIMACE, causing a brief market surge.
- The hacker’s profile update hinted at a rug pull with a message about $700,000 in Solana.
- This hack reflects a broader trend of targeting high-profile accounts to push crypto scams.
On August 21, McDonald’s official Instagram was hacked to promote a Solana-based memecoin called GRIMACE. The unauthorized posts falsely claimed the token was “a McDonald’s experiment on Solana.” The post quickly gained thousands of likes and stayed on the 5 million-follower account for at least an hour.
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Blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps revealed that the hacker initially used the Solana memecoin deployer pump.fun to acquire 75% of the total Grimace token supply, later distributing it across around 100 different wallets. According to DexScreener data, after McDonald’s official account posted about it, the value of the GRIMACE memecoin surged from a market cap of just a few thousand dollars to as much as $25 million in just 30 minutes. However, the memecoin’s value soon plummeted after the hacker sold off their holdings, with the market cap dropping below $600K.
McDonald's official Instagram account was suspected to have been hacked, claiming that it had issued the Meme token "GRIMACE" on Solana. The market value of GRIMACE rose to $25 million within 30m and then fell rapidly. Guillaume Huin, the marketing director of McDonald's, also… pic.twitter.com/uLrgxK1DCz
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 21, 2024
After the attack, the hacker edited the McDonald’s bio to brag about their exploits and claimed they had made $700,000 from the rug pull. Rug pulls are illegal crypto schemes that appear legitimate by promoting fake tokens, but the scammers abruptly drain investors’ funds once they’ve attracted enough investment.
The memecoin posts and edited bio have been removed, and the account has returned to normal. McDonald’s told the New York Post it was aware of an “isolated incident” affecting its social media accounts on August 21.
McDonald said:
“We have resolved the issue on those accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted during that time.”
SOL-Based Memecoin Scams
Earlier this year, the Solana memecoin honeypot scam known as ‘BONKKILLER’ reached an astonishing $328 trillion market cap by freezing token holders’ accounts. In another case, Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney’s X account was hacked to promote a Solana-based memecoin called ‘SWEENEY.’
Did someone hack @sydney_sweeney? Post deleted. A couple of coins launched on SOL recently pic.twitter.com/E2CKndsQFg
— Ioachim Viju 🐻⛓️ BlockHunters (@IoachimViju) July 2, 2024
The scammers falsely claimed it was an official launch from Sweeney. Interestingly, some of these memecoin scam tactics have even deceived well-known “rug pull detectors,” according to blockchain security firm Blockfence.
Rise in Social Media Hacks Targeting High-Profile Accounts for Crypto Scams
The hacking of McDonald’s Instagram page is part of a broader trend of social media account attacks. Earlier this year, the X account of Google’s cybersecurity firm Mandiant was also hacked. The attackers used that account to promote a fake token, pretending to be the crypto wallet Phantom. The scam messages led users to a fake website and stayed online for several hours before being taken down.
In July, Doja Cat’s X account was hacked to promote a Solana-based memecoin. The hacker changed her profile picture and bio, then tweeted over 20 times to her 5.6 million followers. Shortly after, Doja Cat clarified on Instagram to her 24 million followers that she wasn’t behind the posts. Even figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have had their accounts compromised. Since Elon Musk took over X, there have been increasing concerns about the security of verified accounts.
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