Irish police X accounts suspected of being hacked, used to promote crypto phishing content

PANews, October 15 — Multiple official X accounts under Ireland's national police force (An Garda Síochána) are suspected of having been hijacked and used to promote cryptocurrency. The affected accounts include the official traffic safety account GardaTraffic, which has around 600,000 followers, and the general government affairs account GardaInfo, which has nearly 300,000 followers.

The attack occurred on Wednesday evening. The hackers not only removed the accounts' official police badge logos but also changed the account profile locations to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and posted a flurry of tweets promoting crypto assets, including phishing content that lured users into claiming XRP quotas. At present, some of the offending tweets have been flagged with warnings by the platform. Irish police responded that they have taken note of the security incident and will issue an official investigation statement later.