Coins.ph social media hack promotes fake $COINSPH token
On December 2, the official X account of major Philippine cryptocurrency exchange Coins.ph was hacked. The hackers used the platform to launch a new token called $COINSPH, falsely claiming to operate under Solana Network's pump.fun.
Scammers claim that some social media accounts for $COINSPH are an intermediate token similar to an ETF and ask people to link to a specific contract address.
Secret phishing scam
Hackers use deceptive low payouts and Solana's high speed disambiguation to pretend to be a genuine MLM. The posts asked to directly buy a token named ‘crypto trend compass' and instructed users to ‘buy $COINSPH now, be an early supporter'.
Fortunately for Coins.ph, the scam only happened in the X account, and there is no misinformation about the incident on Facebook or anywhere else on its official page.
Coin.ph's swift response
Coins.ph quickly addressed the situation, removing the offending messages at 12:33pm the same day. The exchange warned its users against it and asked them not to engage with the token or the contract address.
To reassure angry customers, Coins.ph clarified that its main servers and operations were not compromised or affected during the attack. For that reason, the exchange announced that it will continue to strengthen the security work to prevent further abuses.
This incident brings cybercriminals' intent to attack social media platforms to access cryptocurrency. Alerts require new ads to be checked and verified by other authentic sources before acting on them and implementing time-sensitive promotions.
