Hacked Cardano Foundation X account posts fake token, false SEC lawsuit notice

The X account of the Cardano Foundation was compromised on Sunday by an unknown party, leading to the false announcement of a Cardano-branded token on Solana and, later, the false disclosure of an SEC lawsuit against the company. 

The compromised X account was first used to post a thread purportedly announcing a token called $ADASOL, a Solana-based token that was purportedly "Cardano, reimagined for Solana’s speed and innovation." 

Unlike some scam attempts, the thread was written in a relatively sophisticated way, with thirteen posts explaining the purpose of the token and linking to genuine resources, such as the Cardano Foundation's website and a recent podcast episode that purportedly discussed the token. 

The fake token saw over $500,000 worth of trading volume, according to DexScreener, before traders appeared to realize that the token was the result of a scam.

The post was removed within an hour after posting, at which point the account posted another false notice: this time, supposedly warning Cardano's community that the Foundation was served with an SEC lawsuit on Sunday. "In light of this unexpected legal action, we have made the difficult decision to immediately cease all support towards the $ADA token to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements," the false notice reads. 

The post, which has replies disabled, has over 256,000 views on X at time of publishing, though many quote-tweets warn that the account has been compromised.

When one Cardano fan asked whether the notice was real, a team lead at the Cardano Foundation replied, "Confirmed, we’re on it." The Cardano Community X account also later clarified, "The Cardano Foundation X account @Cardano_CF has been compromised. Please ignore any posts from the account at this time while we address this."