Technology Miraj Islam October 5, 2026 0 Comments

Hackers hijacked Microsoft’s X account for a scam featuring Clippy, everyone’s least favorite tech mascot.

Microsoft Account X Hijacked to Promote Suspicious $CLIPPY Cryptocurrency Token
Attackers Amplified Scam with False Microsoft Statements and Apology Posts
Microsoft confirmed the unauthorized access, removed the posts, and secured the account.

Cybercriminals managed to briefly take over Microsoft’s X account and used it to promote a cryptocurrency-themed scam. To make matters even worse, they later tried to make it look like Microsoft claimed their account and issued a fake apology tweet.

The wonderful world of cryptocurrencies has a subculture called “meme coins.” These are obscure and virtually worthless tokens that emerge quickly as part of an ongoing trend and disappear just as quickly. For example, there was a token called SQUID that emerged while the Squid Game series was popular, and there was one called HAWK that emerged while the “Hawk Tuah” girl was popular on the Internet.

While it is not a rule, these coins are also often scams. Community members purchase them, allowing creators to extract value before disappearing. SQUID was worth around $2,800 per token at its peak, and collapsed to $0.0008 within minutes, while HAWK lost around 90% of its value almost immediately after launch.

Enter Clippy

It seems that the latest meme coin to be used in this way is called CLIPPY, based on the infamous virtual assistant that was introduced with Office 97.

For younger users, older versions of Microsoft Office came with a virtual assistant that appeared at the bottom right of the screen and asked if the user needed help. It was designed as a large paper clip with eyes and was discontinued a few years later for being practically useless and annoying.

Since then, however, Clippy has become an internet meme and something to be remembered fondly, especially in today’s world of cold, calculated, and heartless AI agents. Clippy has become a symbol of a warmer, more humane computing age, and as such, it has also been abused in a scam.

As part of the scam, the scammers created a Clippy They then hijacked the official Microsoft account and retweeted this post to their audience of 13 million.

But promoting an obvious scam to millions of people who trust Microsoft was only half the trick. They later deleted the original post and issued a rare public apology:

“We are aware of the promotion of a cryptocurrency token in connection with $MSFT stock, including unauthorized use of the Clippy brand and Microsoft-related intellectual property,” the scammers wrote. “Microsoft has not authorized, sponsored, endorsed, or granted permission for the creation, promotion, or use of any cryptocurrency token associated with Clippy, Microsoft, or $MSFT.”

This post was also later deleted.

Build your own Clippy

Subsequently, Musk’s social network deactivated the fraudulent account @clippymsftcto. However, researchers from cyber news I later found a different account: @ClippyMSFT, which still promotes the $CLIPPY token and claims to “have a liquidity pool directly matched to $MSFT.”

“For the first time, everyone’s favorite clip has a liquidity pool directly matched to $MSFT, the company that built it is now the floor beneath its exchanges,” read one tweet. A separate tweet also promoted software that allows users to “build their own Clippy” which, if this author has learned anything over the years, sounds a lot like a way to distribute malware. In this particular case, possibly a cryptocurrency thief.

Microsoft later spoke out and told the media that its account was compromised and abused in a scam: “We have confirmed unauthorized access to our account on X, including posts that did not come from Microsoft,” said Microsoft spokesperson Brent Colburn. “The account has been secured and the unauthorized posts have been removed, and we continue to investigate the circumstances.”