TL;DRa
- Hacker exploited Truth Terminal founder Andy Ayrey’s X account to promote a fraudulent token.
- The token reached a market cap of over $25 million but suffered a 98% drop following a sell-off.
- The hacker obtained $600,000, and Ayrey’s account is suspected to be still compromised.
Truth Terminal founder Andy Ayrey was the victim of an attack on his X (formerly Twitter) account, where a hacker used his profile to promote a fraudulent token with the ticker IB.
The attacker managed to grab 12.5% of the token’s total supply, which quickly generated interest among unsuspecting investors in the crypto space, pushing the token’s market cap to over $25 million.
As more people bought the token, its value rapidly increased, but what seemed like a promising opportunity turned out to be an elaborate scheme to profit illicitly.
The source of this information, as reported by DexScreener, indicates that the hacker took advantage of the popularity of the Truth Terminal chatbot to generate trust among users.
Once the token price peaked, the perpetrator liquidated a large portion of his holdings, causing a steep 98% drop in its value, reducing the capitalization to $500,000.
This move allowed the hacker to make a profit of $600,000 before the market reacted.
Although Ayrey managed to temporarily regain control of his X account, the damage was already done.
Ayrey himself explained that the hacker gained access to his account through a SIM swap attack, in which the control of the victim’s phone number is breached to access their accounts protected by two-step authentication.
However, the situation remains problematic, as after its initial recovery, Ayrey‘s account has continued to post suspicious messages, suggesting it may still be under the attacker‘s control.
The importance of security in the crypto space
This incident highlights the fragility of security on social media platforms, especially in an environment such as cryptocurrencies, where the risks are high and losses can be in the millions.
Ayrey‘s case has not only affected his personal reputation and that of his project, Truth Terminal, but has also put at risk the funds of many investors who trusted the promotion of the fraudulent token.
Truth Terminal, which had gained notoriety in the crypto community for being the first chatbot to amass more than $1 million through its relationship with memecoins like GOAT, has come under the shadow of this attack.
The platform, created by Ayrey from a language model trained with data from social networks such as Reddit and X, had managed to capture the attention of important figures, such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who donated $50,000 in bitcoin to the project.
The attack has served as a reminder to investors about the importance of verifying the authenticity of any cryptocurrency-related information before making investment decisions.
Despite the partial recovery of the IB token‘s value thanks to a community initiative, the damage was already done, and many investors will likely never recover what they lost.
With more instances of similar attacks in the crypto space, this incident underscores the need to implement more robust security measures for both users and platforms.
