Meme project hacked after Telegram chat with founder, impersonating Jupiter DEX

Chill Drone (CHONE) launched and trades successfully despite a run-in with hackers. The token aimed to build a no-stress investment community around the drone meme, when the team was approached with a malicious wallet-draining link.

Chill Drone (CHONE) started its trading with a major setback, as team and community wallets were drained through a malicious link. The Chill Drone team, unfortunately, encountered a common crypto scam when trying to verify its token through Jupiter. The project sent out the usual form to verify CHONE. After not receiving feedback for two weeks, the Chill Drone team decided to be proactive and reach out through the legitimate Telegram channel of Jupiter DEX aggregator.

Jupiter DEX aggregator usually verifies Solana tokens after at least 21 days from launching, after a minimal $10K in daily volumes. CHONE fulfilled all the market cap and community conditions, though the team still claimed they had to wait for verification.

The Chill Drone project already built up a Telegram channel with over 2,000 members, where attempts at sending malicious links are still a threat. The token has a total of 1,803 holders, with around 5.54% of the supply held in the Raydium liquidity pool.

CHONE trades at a valuation of $1.12M, the usual range for a token just starting out. The asset expects a potential breakout, similar to other memes just starting out.

The initial idea of CHONE was to launch a token for both meme token veterans and newcomers with limited crypto experience. Chill Drone was created by a team with previous business experience outside crypto, which increased the token’s credibility. The project aims to follow a model similar to Pudgy Penguins, creating a community with physical items and merchandise.

Chill Drone team gets wallets drained in Telegram phishing attack

Like other meme tokens, Chill Drone had multiple copycats after its launch on Pump.fun. This created the need to become verified, especially on the Jupiter aggregator and routing service. An OK tick on Jupiter would ensure the community chose the right CHONE token.

One of the Chill Drone team members decided to contact Jupiter through Telegram, encountering a legitimate-looking group with over 73,000 members. One of the group’s members, claiming to be a Jupiter developer, opened a personal chat with Chill Drone’s team. The alleged developer, Alex Dobrin, would turn out to be a scammer who sent out a malicious link.

The hacker contacted the founder of Chill Drone with an offer of verifying the token on Jupiter DEX.

The hacker contacted the founder of Chill Drone with an offer of verifying the token on Jupiter DEX. The alleged Jupiter developer looked over Chill Drone’s wallets and requested to connect the main team wallet with the biggest balance to the link that he sent. After that, the funds were moved and laundered.

“Before I realized what was happening, all the tokens in that account, along with those in the linked wallets, were drained. It’s especially heartbreaking because it wasn’t just the dev team’s wallets—it also included funds from family members and community members who had invested with us, many of whom were new to buying crypto and asked us to buy for them,” said the project’s founder, Adnaan.

The team became aware of the drained wallet only after the community noticed the missing funds, which initially appeared to be a rug pull. The CHONE token’s price plummeted following a $60,000 sell-off in a single transaction. To stabilize the asset, the team injected personal funds, helping to redirect its trajectory. The only source of selling was the hacker, as CHONE is widely distributed across multiple wallets, none of which hold more than 5% of the total supply.

The team put in about $50K in personal funds, and continued buying more tokens to bring up the market cap, and buy back the stolen tokens. This ensured the coin’s stability and repaired the reputation with the community.

“Many of the community members, with the long-term vision and confidence they have, bought back into the coin as they realized it was effectively trading at a ‘discount,’” explained the project’s founder.

The token team has not given up on CHONE, and will continue to develop the asset. The newly verified token is already listed on CoinGecko, starting trading anew from January 13. The token creator team will investigate the hack, while also taking care of the platform’s development.

After the exploit, the Jupiter Exchange Official channel once again posted its message to warn against impersonators.

Source: Jupiter DEX Telegram channel

Hacker swapped CHONE for SOL

The hacked address was created for the sole purpose of draining the CHONE tokens. Based on wallet activity, the hacker wallet retained USDC for $29,250. The funds were drained in a single transaction on January 5, then swapped for SOL. The final balance in the hacker’s wallet is in USDC.

Source: DexScreener

As a proof for the exploit, the hacker’s wallet was first funded by the Chone reserve wallet, with no transfers or connections before that. The hacker also interacted with a known Binance hot wallet, going under the name of kiing.sol.

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