UK Minister’s X Account Hacked to Promote Fake ‘House of Commons’ Crypto

UK government minister Lucy Powell’s X account was recently hacked to promote a fake cryptocurrency called “$HCC” claiming to be a “House of Commons” coin, BBC reported. 

The now-deleted posts on the House of Commons leader’s account described the coin as “a community-driven” digital currency project. The hack was confirmed on Tuesday morning, the account was quickly secured, and the misleading posts were removed. Other well-known public figures have also been recently targeted in a similar way by online hackers. 

Some of those posts even featured the official House of Commons logo, which added a false sense of credibility to it. Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central with 70K followers, is the Leader of the House of Commons, which is a key cabinet role. The hack incident is especially concerning given her high-profile position. 

A Pump and Dump Scam?

Scammers often hijack X accounts to promote fake cryptocurrencies. They usually gain access by tricking users with phishing emails or using passwords leaked in data breaches. Once they get control of the account, they create a worthless crypto token in hopes that the followers will buy it. The scammers then sell their holdings quickly to profit from it before the scam is exposed and the account is shut down. 

Luke Nolan from CoinShares called this hack a classic case of a “pump and dump” scam, where fraudsters pump up a coin’s value with fake hype and then dump it for profit. In this case, only 34 transactions were made, earning about £225.

He said: “It appears that the tweet got deleted quite quickly, which meant that the deployer (person who made the coin) did not really get a chance to extract that much from people who might have invested in the coin.”

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Cybersecurity, A Top Priority

A spokesperson for the House of Commons stated that cybersecurity is a top priority and that they provide advice to members on digital safety, but they don’t comment on specific security measures. 

Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and cybercrime reporting center, reported a rise in social media and email hacks in 2024, with over 35,000 incidents. They recommend using two-step verification and strong, unique passwords for better protection.