Over the past few days, African countries have been in the spotlight. After the Central African Republic and Congo, it was Kenya’s turn. As it turned out, hackers gained access to the Kenya Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) social media accounts on X (Twitter) and Facebook. And they used this to post information about a fake cryptocurrency created allegedly to improve the country’s budget. Law enforcement officials said this reported February 9 (very interestingly, all the events in the mentioned African countries started on the same day).
Cybercriminals have announced the launch of the $DCI cryptocurrency and presented it as a promising blockchain project that could reduce Kenya’s government spending by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
To attract more people, the attackers distributed the token’s contract address and claimed that DCI was already available on leading crypto exchanges. In addition, the hackers offered free tokens in exchange for likes and asked users to urge the media to support the project.
As of February 10, all the hackers’ posts have been deleted, and the accounts have been brought back under the control of DCI. Kenyan law enforcement officials said they had launched a detailed investigation into the incident.
On February 9, President of the Central African Republic (CAR) Faustin Archange Touadera launched memecoin Central African Republic Meme (CAR ticker). The success of the token inspired the Congolese leader to announce the launch of his own coin (although later this post was deleted from X, as well as the account itself. They turned out to be fake). In fact, publications about the CAR memecoin are still causing debate: is it scam or not? Although, it seems to be enough that Faustin-Archange Touadera is known for stealing from his own people and love for Russian mercenaries.