Hackers hijack Microsoft’s X account to promote Clippy crypto scam

Key takeaways:

• Hackers compromised Microsoft’s official X account and used it to promote an unauthorized Clippy-themed cryptocurrency.
• The account has 13 million followers, and its profile picture briefly changed to Clippy.
• Microsoft said it secured the account, removed the posts, and continues to investigate.
• X shut down one fake Clippy account, but another still promoted the token.

Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.

Have you been missing Clippy? Microsoft’s iconic paperclip has just made a surprising comeback as part of a crypto scam. The company’s official X account got hijacked to promote an unauthorized Clippy-themed cryptocurrency.

The tech giant’s X account, which has 13 million followers, started following a Clippy crypto account and reposted one of its tweets on Thursday.

Clippy is Microsoft’s old animated paperclip assistant, which was introduced with Office 97 and later removed because of its intrusive pop-ups. Microsoft’s profile picture was also replaced with one of Clippy.

About 30 minutes after the original posts were taken down, the account published a bizarre apology, which was also soon deleted. Microsoft confirmed that it didn’t publish any of those tweets.