Azuki Twitter account hacked as users affected by a wallet-draining scam

The Azuki Twitter account was recently hacked, resulting in some users counting losses after their wallets were drained. The Twitter account hack resulted in the theft of more than $750,000 worth of USDC, 11 non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and more than 3.9 Ether.

Azuki’s Twitter account hacked

The breach on the Azuki Twitter account led to crypto assets being stolen from some users in under 30 minutes. The hackers accessed the stolen crypto assets using malicious links that were portrayed as a “land mint” for the Azuki NFT project.

However, the purported NFT mint was fake. The users that followed the malicious link deployed a drainer contract that tricked them into approving a transaction that drained funds from their crypto wallets.

One of the users whose funds were stolen sent more than $750,000 worth of the USDC stablecoin to the attacker’s wallet, according to data from Etherscan. The malicious links were posted on the Twitter account of Azuki.

Shortly after the attacker published the tweets containing links promoting the fake “surprise mint,” most NFT traders started suspending that the Azuki Twitter account might have been compromised. One hour after the attacker sent out the tweets, the Azuki Twitter account was no longer visible on the Twitter search results, and the fake tweets were deleted.

The Azuki Community Manager confirmed this breach on the company’s social media account. Harry Denley, a security researcher at the MetaMask Web3 wallet, was among the first to notice the scam promoted through the Azuki Twitter account. Denley noted that MetaMask has already blocked the malicious link promoted by the attackers.

Solana-based wallet Phantom has also flagged the malicious links as unsafe. Phantom is also sending alerts to users that try to link their Phantom wallets to the malicious website opened through this malicious domain.

The Head of Community and Product Manager at Azuki published an alert around one hour after this account was breached. While speaking on a Twitter Space, Dem said that the Azuki team had reached out to Twitter to fix the situation.

Azuki’s Twitter account restored

At the time of writing, the Azuki Twitter account had already been restored, with the team saying it was still investigating the breach. The team noted that it regained control of the Twitter account through two-factor authentication.

It is not the first time hackers have targeted the Azuki NFT collection. Last year, several compromised Twitter accounts using Azuki profile images promoted airdrop scams to take advantage of the brand’s popularity to steal user funds. Breaches in the NFT industry have been significantly high in recent years amid increased popularity and investments in the space.