{"id":282477,"date":"2025-04-15T11:44:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T11:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/minister-lucy-powells-x-account-hacked-to-promote-crypto-scam\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T11:44:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T11:44:04","slug":"minister-lucy-powells-x-account-hacked-to-promote-crypto-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/minister-lucy-powells-x-account-hacked-to-promote-crypto-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister Lucy Powell’s X account hacked to promote crypto scam"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Government minister Lucy Powell’s X account has been hacked to promote a scam “House of Commons” cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n

A string of now deleted posts on the House of Commons leader’s account described the “$HCC” coin as “a community-driven digital currency bringing people’s power to the blockchain”. <\/p>\n

The MP’s office confirmed her account was hacked on Tuesday morning and said “steps were taken quickly to secure the account and remove misleading posts”.<\/p>\n

Other public figures with a large number of followers who have been targeted in a similar way by online hackers recently include BBC journalist Nick Robinson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of the posts from Powell’s account, which is verified by the platform and mentions her cabinet position in the bio, included an image of the House of Commons logo.<\/p>\n

The MP for Manchester Central, who has nearly 70,000 followers on X, has been leader of the House of Commons since Labour won power last summer. <\/p>\n

The role is responsible for planning and supervising the government’s legislative programme, while also upholding the rights of backbench MPs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Taking over X accounts to advertise scam crypto coins is a common method used by cyber criminals.<\/p>\n

Fraudsters often take over accounts using phishing emails – scam emails containing links to websites that either access systems or trick users into sharing their passwords. <\/p>\n

Passwords can also be obtained using leaked information from data breaches. <\/p>\n

At that point cyber criminals take over the account and plan their posts around hastily spun up crypto coins that can only take a couple of hours to create and launch.<\/p>\n

They hope that high-profile and trusted accounts might encourage people to buy some of the otherwise worthless coins so that they can make some money before it all get blocked and stopped.<\/p>\n

Luke Nolan, a senior research associate at CoinShares, an asset management company specialising in digital assets, said the hack of Powell’s account was an example of “pump and dump”. <\/p>\n

This is when the people who created the cryptocoin inflate its value, get others to invest, and then sell their majority share to get profit, but leave the coin worthless.<\/p>\n

Mr Nolan said there had only been 34 transactions on the coin, which would have led to a profit of about \u00a3225.<\/p>\n

A House of Commons spokesman said: “UK Parliament takes cyber security extremely seriously. <\/p>\n

“We provide advice to users – including Members – to make them aware of the risks and how to manage their digital safety; however, we do not comment on specific details of our cyber security policies.”<\/p>\n

Action Fraud said there was a rise in social and email accounts being hacked in 2024, with 35,343 reports. <\/p>\n

It advises setting up 2-step verification for accounts and using a strong, unique password of three random words. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year Robinson, who presents BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said his X account was hacked after he clicked on an email he wrongly believed was sent to him by the social media platform. <\/p>\n

Post on his account claimed he was launching a cryptocurrency called “$Today”. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Government minister Lucy Powell’s X account has been hacked to promote a scam “House of Commons” cryptocurrency. A string of now deleted posts on the House of Commons leader’s account described the “$HCC” coin as “a community-driven digital currency bringing people’s power to the blockchain”. The MP’s office confirmed her account was hacked on Tuesday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/2fd2\/live\/1b0ab5d0-19e4-11f0-ac21-23020a0fbda6.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[3335,4251,45538,58262,2124,6107,20130,410],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282479,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282477\/revisions\/282479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}