Hackers took aim at Westminster on Tuesday, commandeering British Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell’s verified X account to promote a bogus crypto token branded as the “House of Commons Coin (HCC).”
The compromised account, followed by nearly 70,000 users, tweeted a now-deleted message claiming the HCC token was “a community-driven digital currency bringing people’s power to the blockchain.”
The posts, which featured the official House of Commons logo, were quickly removed after Powell’s office confirmed the breach and secured the account.
A spokesperson for the Labour minister told BBC News that, “Steps were taken quickly to secure the account and remove misleading posts.”
Decrypt has reached out to Lucy Powell and the House of Commons for comment, and will update this article should they respond.
Hackers target public figures
The hack raises concerns over a growing trend of cybercriminals targeting public figures to lend legitimacy to hastily launched scam tokens.
The bad actors hijack trusted accounts to announce flashy, community-oriented coins, often fabricated in a matter of hours, and then try to profit off a wave of uninformed buying before the posts are removed.
In recent months, several high-profile accounts have been weaponized to promote bogus crypto projects.
In February, Argentine lawmaker José Luis Espert, a member of President Javier Milei’s party, also saw his account on X, formerly Twitter, compromised.
A post announced the launch of “$LIBRA V2,” calling it “a project dedicated to boosting the Argentine economy.”
The timing raised eyebrows, coming just weeks after Milei himself promoted the original LIBRA token, which soared in value before crashing spectacularly, leaving many investors burned and triggering a wave of public backlash.
Espert’s wife and advisor later confirmed the account was hijacked, and a follow-up video from the politician blamed a coordinated effort to destabilize the government.
In the Philippines, former Vice President Leni Robredo’s account was similarly misused in February to promote Solana.
Robredo’s hacked posts claimed she supported a “fair launch” and compelled her to take action after what she saw on crypto Twitter.
“Please ignore all posts while I am trying to regain control of the account,” she wrote afterward on Facebook.
These are only the latest examples of a long-running series of attacks, which rely on the authority and perceived credibility of political figures to manipulate public sentiment and drive investment into worthless tokens.
In July 2020, hackers accessed internal systems by compromising Twitter employees’ accounts in a “coordinated social engineering attack,”, seizing control of some of the most influential accounts in America, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and more.
The compromised accounts tweeted nearly identical messages promising to double any Bitcoin sent to a wallet address.
In September 2020, hackers breached a Twitter account used to promote an Indian national relief fund, soliciting charitable donations in Ethereum. Twitter confirmed the breach was not related to any legitimate fundraising effort. The tweets were quickly deleted.
Just over a year later, in December 2021, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself saw his Twitter account hacked, briefly displaying a message that India had adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and was distributing tokens to citizens, before the message was taken down and the account was secured.
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