A hacker briefly took control of Binance co-CEO Yi He’s WeChat account and used the access to tout the meme token $Mubarakah, triggering a sharp price spike and enabling a small but profitable pump-and-dump operation, blockchain trackers say.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) posted a warning on X that Yi He’s WeChat had been compromised and urged users not to buy tokens from the hacker’s posts.
The fraudulent endorsement led retail traders to pile into the low-liquidity token before the attacker sold into the frenzy.
Blockchain investigator Lookonchain traced the operation to two newly created wallets. According to the tracker, the attacker spent about 19,479 USDT to purchase roughly 21.16 million $Mubarakah tokens.
The attacker later sold approximately 11.95 million tokens for about 43,520 USDT and retained around 9.21 million tokens valued at roughly 31,000 USDT, for an estimated total profit of 55,000 USDT.
Lookonchain published the two implicated wallet addresses, enabling observers to follow the sequence of buys and sells in near real time. The transparent ledger allowed analysts to map the attacker’s inflows and exits, revealing a rapid execution designed to exploit social credibility for market movement.
Security experts called the episode a classic social-engineering pump-and-dump. By hijacking a high-profile account, the attacker leveraged perceived authority to create a buying cascade among unsuspecting retail investors in an illiquid market.
“High-profile account takeovers remain a powerful tool for manipulators in token markets where small capital can produce outsized price moves,” one analyst said.
Binance had not issued a detailed public response beyond CZ’s warning at the time of reporting.
The incident underscores ongoing vulnerabilities around centralized social accounts and the risks of trading thinly traded meme tokens based on single-channel endorsements.
Regulators, exchanges, and token projects face renewed pressure to improve account security standards and introduce guardrails to detect and halt rapid, manipulation-style trading.
For individual traders, the message is clear: verify endorsements across official channels and be wary of sudden token surges driven by social posts.