Robinhood Presumably Hacked, Was Any Loss Incurred?
American commission-free trading platform Robinhood Markets Inc might have suffered a major attack on its Twitter handle, according to a screenshot shared by crypto media news platform db. According to the notification shared by db on Twitter, the official Robinhood account was used to post the listing of a new token with the sticker symbol «RBH.»
The publisher of the tweet noted that the supposed token was launched on the Binance Smart Chain, and a link to the PancakeSwap page for the sale of the token was added to the tweet.
Robinhood presumably hacked pic.twitter.com/UgRD3UCbo9
— db (@tier10k) January 25, 2023
The listing as shown was billed to go live at 12:00 am EST, and the price set was pegged at $0.0005. While Robinhood does not have plans to launch a token of its own, being from the United States, which seems one of the most regulated markets for securities, the announcement appears inconsistent with the trading platform’s style of announcing its proposed token-listing ventures.
A major red flag that showed the tweet did not originate from Robinhood was the link to PancakeSwap. As a trading platform itself that supports a lot of crypto tokens, there are very low chances that Robinhood would list its token, if any, on a decentralized exchange like PancakeSwap.
Was any damage done?
A review of the official verified Robinhood Twitter profile shows no traces of the shared tweet, which implies that perhaps the brokerage firm had regained control of its account and taken the tweet offline. Robinhood later gave a statement that it was aware of the scam but quickly removed the tweet.
«We’re aware of the unauthorized posts from Robinhood Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook profiles, which were all removed within minutes. At this time, based on our ongoing investigation, we believe the source of the incident was via a third party vendor,» Robinhood said.
There were no reports that any user was a victim of the scam at the time of writing.