Tron DAO hack causes $45,000 in losses as Curve Finance also targeted

On May 2, the Tron DAO X (formerly Twitter) account was compromised by a hacker who solicited payments through direct messages and posted a fraudulent contract address, resulting in approximately $45,000 in illicitly requested funds, according to a spokesperson from Tron.

“We will never ask anyone for payments like this via DM or otherwise,” Tron’s (CRYPTO:TRX) security team emphasised, quickly detecting the breach and revoking the hacker’s access, while warning the community to remain cautious.

The incident appeared to stem from a social engineering attack targeting a team member, which allowed the attacker to gain control of the account.

Even after Tron regained control, the hacker continued to contact users offering paid promotional posts from the account.

Tron’s team is currently investigating the breach and cooperating with law enforcement.

Founder Justin Sun accused crypto exchange OKX of ignoring a law enforcement request to freeze stolen funds linked to the hack, though OKX’s CEO Star Xu denied the claim, and Sun later removed the accusation.

In a related incident, Curve Finance’s X account was also taken over by an unauthorised party who posted a fraudulent CRV airdrop link with a weeklong registration period.

Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov confirmed the account had been quietly accessed by a bad actor but stated no other accounts were affected.

The Curve team regained control with help from cybersecurity specialists, including SEAL, and discovered the hacker had blocked users who reported the scam.

The exact method of the Curve account breach remains unclear, with no evidence of client-side compromise.

This wave of attacks follows several other high-profile X account takeovers this year, including UK MP Lucy Powell’s account promoting a scam token and the hacking of crypto data aggregator Kaito AI’s account.

At the time of reporting, the TRON price was $0.2473.