Hackers Use Yi He's WeChat for MUBARA Pump-and-Dump

Hackers compromised the dormant WeChat account of Binance co-CEO Yi He on December 9, using it to promote the obscure memecoin MUBARA in a coordinated pump-and-dump scheme that briefly spiked the token's price before a sharp collapse.

The breach occurred late that Tuesday, when attackers seized control of the account, which Yi He had abandoned years earlier. They posted endorsements portraying MUBARA, also known as Mubarakah, as a promising investment. The messages quickly spread through WeChat channels popular among China's crypto community, creating a fear-of-missing-out effect that drew retail traders to decentralized exchanges on the BNB Chain. Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain tracked the operation, revealing that two newly created wallets had accumulated 21.16 million MUBARA tokens hours earlier, spending 19,479 USDT on platforms like PancakeSwap.

As the fake promotions circulated, MUBARA's price surged from around 0.001 USDT to a peak of 0.008 USDT, an eightfold increase that pushed its market value to about 8 million USDT temporarily. Trading volume exploded, with Dexscreener data showing a flood of buys from traders who mistook the posts for a genuine recommendation...