The X account of Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu, one of CoinDesk’s most influential in 2024, was compromised and used to promote a fictitious token, the company said in a post on the social media platform.
Animoca, a gaming and metaverse venture capital firm, posted a warning on its own account at 01:36 UTC on Thursday saying that Siu’s account had been compromised and that the company was not introducing an official token or token. non-fungible (NFT).
‼️🚨 Unfortunately @ysiu The social media account has been compromised. There is no official token or NFT release by Animoca Brands. The token launch on Solana, as claimed in a post, was done by the hacker. DO NOT interact with the account and remain alert.
We will provide a…
– Animoca Brands (@animocabrands) December 26, 2024
According to ZachXBT, the exploit was likely perpetrated via a phishing email purporting to come from X and be related to copyright infringement. The crypto exploit researcher posted on Tuesday about several similar attacks that took place over the past month, allowing the perpetrators to get away with around $500,000 at the time.
The fake post from Siu’s account promoted a token called MOCA on the Solana blockchain, according to a screenshot posted by ZachXBT.
Moca Foundation, a “community-owned foundation that aims to power the network effects of the Mocaverse,” has its own Moca Coin (MOCA), which it describes as an “omnichain network token.” Mocaverse is an account management and identification system in which both Animoca and Siu have personal participation.
According to a Mocaverse post, X has secured control of Siu’s account, which is in the process of verifying ownership. Related accounts remain intact.
“There is no compromise with the official identifiers of Animoca Brands, Moca Network or MOCA Foundation, and strict security measures are in place,” he said.
Whoever is behind the fake MOCA token is active on the Pump.fun memecoin creation platform and has also created several NFT collections over the past two weeks, on-chain data shows. The wallet contains around $67,000 in the USDC stablecoin, although it is unclear if this is the direct product of some phishing scam.
Oliver Knight contributed reporting to this story.
UPDATE (December 26, 14:52 UTC): Add Solscan wallet data in the last paragraph.
