The Instagram account of McDonald’s (MCD) suffered a cyber-attack this week. The hackers used the attack to promote a memecoin that is based on the fast-food giant’s Grimace character before performing a scam known as a rug pull where they sell up and cause the price to plummet.
McDonald’s Hacked In Crypto Scam
Posts began to appear on Wednesday 21 August, with the five million followers of McDonald’s on Instagram seeing the grimace memecoin promoted. This token is based on the Solana blockchain and its market value began to rise, apparently due to the hacked account.
The value of grimace began to climb until its market cap reached $20m. At this point, the hackers appear to have cashed out, sending the overall value of the tokens in circulation to under $1m. They then updated the bio on the MCD Instagram account to thank its followers for helping them to collect $700,000 in profits.
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As part of the hack, people were advised to go to the Pump.fun crypto platform to invest in the grimace coin, with big returns promised for anyone who made a small investment. The posts appeared to be authentic and fooled some people into believing that McDonald’s was backing the grimace memecoin.
Analysts suggest that the hackers probably controlled close to 75% of the total supply of the token before the scam. This allowed them to sell everything they owned and net a profit. A statement from McDonald’s said:
We are aware of an isolated incident that impacted our social media accounts earlier today. We have resolved the issue on those accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted during that time.
