Watcher.Guru's Crypto X Account Hacked: Is It Spreading False News About XRP?

The cryptocurrency news site widely followed by many, Watcher.Guru, has confirmed that their official account X has been hacked after a fake post about a potential deal between Ripple and SWIFT spread across their social media channels, potentially affecting interest in XRP. The violation occurred at approximately 2:05 AM on March 21 UTC, when an unauthorized post claimed that SWIFT was about to finalize an agreement with Ripple to use XRP for cross-border payments. Watcher.Guru quickly deleted the post and issued a statement clarifying that the claim is false and was not made by the editorial team. "Our account X has been hacked," the website stated in the next post. "We have enabled 2FA and taken extreme measures to avoid being hacked." The Watcher.Guru hack caused the spread of fake news about XRP. Despite these precautionary measures, the breach has resulted in the automatic reposting of misleading information on Watcher.Guru's Telegram, Facebook, and Discord channels by a cross-platform content bot. The team of this platform is currently working with the support department of X to investigate the source of the attack and prevent further incidents. They suspect the violation may be related to a suspicious link shared in their Telegram group on March 5. The message contains an unusual query string "token" in the link, which raises suspicion upon review. The team tried to warn the head of the cybersecurity department of X, @cstanley, but did not receive a response.

It is still unclear whether the malicious link and the attack are directly related to each other or not. However, Watcher.Guru notes that a similar vulnerability previously affected another cryptocurrency news channel, DB News, indicating that there are more targeted attacks aimed at major cryptocurrency media accounts, even those accounts protected by two-factor authentication. At the time of reporting, Watcher.Guru has not yet determined the exact method used in the breach but has reassured followers that all unauthorized content has been removed and the account is now safe. They also committed to releasing further updates when more information becomes available. Social media cryptocurrency hacks are on the rise as pump and dump schemes become widespread. This incident highlights the trend of social media attacks focused on cryptocurrency, many of which are used to pump newly launched meme coins. In February, Dior's Instagram account was compromised to advertise a fake token based on Solana, which reached a market capitalization of $280,000 in a short time before plummeting by 90%. Last week, Kaito AI, an artificial intelligence platform providing cryptocurrency market analysis services, and the founder of this platform, Yu Hu, were also attacked on social media X. Hackers have taken control of the account and issued false information that Kaito AI's wallet has been compromised, while warning users that their funds are at risk. According to the latest report from the major blockchain security platform Immunefi, in February 2025, losses in the cryptocurrency ecosystem increased 20 times month-over-month compared to January 2025. In January, the recorded loss amount was $73,915,700. Just one month later, this figure skyrocketed to $1,528,342,400. The latter figure is the result of nine hacks. In addition, the February figure increased 18 times compared to the same period last year. In February 2024, a loss was recorded at $81,603,400.