KUALA LUMPUR – The National Unity Ministry’s official X account appears to have fallen victim to an apparent hacking incident linked to a non-fungible token (NFT) project, Pudgy Penguins, in what seems to be a bid to promote the launch of its new token.
In the incident which is believed to have occurred at around midnight, parties using the name “Pudgy Penguins” appear to have rebranded the ministry’s X account by changing the profile picture as well as the display name to “Pudgy Panguins”.
While the ministry’s X handle @PerpaduanNegara has not been changed, the hackers have since uploaded and reposted over 50 posts, mostly relating to cryptocurrency sales and other related matters.
Notably, in between posts on NFTs and “meme coins”, referring to cryptocurrencies that attract investors through a fun image, the ministry account also reposted several local news posts, such as information shared on the social media platform by local media Astro Awani and the Communications Ministry’s Information Department.
The ministry’s account had also resposted a post by the official Pudgy Penguins X account cautioning others from interacting with potential scammers imitating PENGU, its new token which was heavily promoted by the alleged hacker via the ministry’s page.
As of press time, the posts shared by the supposed hacker remain up and the X username for the National Unity Ministry’s account has yet to be reverted to reflect the ministry’s hold on the account.
According to news reports, Pudgy Penguins, an Ethereum project whose parent company is Igloo Inc, is set to launch the PENGU token at 9pm local time today after it amassed more than 50 billion social media views through placing toys in supermarket stores in the United States.
The official token for the NFT collection featuring 8,888 unique cartoons of animated penguins is reportedly set to launch on the open-source blockchain platform Solana before extending to other networks including Ethereum and Abstract.
In September, Scoop reported that the X accounts of several government agencies and online news outlets, local and international, were utilised by hackers to promote a cryptocurrency token.
At that time, the token being promoted through the hacked accounts was meme coin $HACKED, which also ran on Solana.
Under Budget 2025, the National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA) received an RM10 million allocation to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity.
The agency’s chief executive officer Megat Zuhairy Megat Tajuddin told Scoop that NACSA will hire 100 more personnel to enforce the Cyber Security Act 2024 and deploy more staff to its 24-hour National Cyber Coordination & Command Centre (NC4). – December 17, 2024