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 “$HOC” 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 morning and said “steps were taken quickly to secure the account and remove misleading posts”.
Other public figures with a large number of followers who have been targeted by online hackers recently include BBC journalist Nick Robinson.
Some of the posts from Powell’s account included an image of the House of Commons logo.
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.
The role is responsible for planning and supervising the government’s legislative programme, while also upholding the rights of backbench MPs.
Taking over X accounts to advertise scam crypto coins is a common method used by cyber criminals.
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.
Passwords can also be obtained using leaked information from data breaches.
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.
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.
Action Fraud said there was a rise in social and email accounts being hacked in 2024, with 35,343 reports.
It advises setting up 2-step verification for accounts and using a strong, unique password of three random words.
