HARARE — EcoCash’s X account was hacked on Wednesday by an individual demanding $35 allegedly “stolen” by the mobile money platform, with the attacker spending more than two hours posting pornography and profanities at customers before the company regained control.
The hacker changed the account’s profile picture to a pornographic image and renamed it with a profanity-laden statement ending with “return my money.”
“I hacked the EcoCash account so that you see how insecure their systems are. I had my money stolen, $35. They are refusing to return it these ****,” the hacker wrote in one post.
In between posting explicit images, the hacker used the handle to abuse customers who had tagged the account seeking to understand what was happening. When one user, Guxungo, posted that “someone has taken over the @EcoCash account,” the hacker responded with an expletive about the user’s backside.
The hacker also taunted the company’s attempts to recover the account.
“You’ve changed the password five times and removed all followers😂😂,” they wrote. “You can’t remove me. Return my money you dogs. Insecure systems.”
There was no way of independently verifying the hacker’s claims of having lost money to EcoCash. The platform routinely handles customer service queries on X, and complaints about missing mobile wallet funds are not uncommon.
EcoCash’s main rival OneMoney seized on the incident, posting a dig on its own X account alongside a security advisory urging customers not to share PINs or use predictable numbers such as birth dates.
“We told them ‘1234’ isn’t a password… but they didn’t listen,” NetOne said.
EcoCash and its parent company Econet had not issued a public statement 20 hours after regaining control of the account.
