Animoca Brands chairman’s X account hacked to promote fake token

Animoca Brands' co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu's X account was hacked to promote a fraudulent token, ANIMOCA, causing a brief surge in value.

Animoca Brands confirmed the breach, advising investors to avoid engaging with Siu's account.

The hacker used Siu’s account to announce the launch of a primary token under Animoca Brands' name, misleading users into believing the company was behind it.

The fake ANIMOCA token saw a 500% price increase within just five minutes, though the value dropped after the hacker deleted the post.

Yat Siu later clarified the situation through a secondary account, stating that the hacker had bypassed two-factor authentication (2FA) security.

He also confirmed that he had reported the issue to X's support team and promised to share insights regarding security flaws on the platform.

Animoca Brands emphasised that the token launch mentioned in the post was not official, urging the public to remain cautious.

"This is an unfortunate incident. There is no official token or NFT launch from Animoca Brands. The token launch on Solana, as claimed in a post, was made by the hacker. Please DO NOT engage with the account and stay vigilant," the company stated.

Animoca Brands is a prominent investor in the Web3 space, holding over 540 investments, including in projects like Yuga Labs, Axie Infinity (CRYPTO:AXS), Polygon (CRYPTO:MATIC), and OpenSea.

This incident follows a similar hack in December when scammers stole $100,000 by promoting a fake CLAUDE (CRYPTO:CLAUDE) token on Anthropic's X account.

Other high-profile hacks include Drake's X account, which was compromised to promote a fake meme coin.

Data from Cyvers’ 2024 report reveals that access control vulnerabilities continue to be a significant issue in the cryptocurrency space, accounting for over $1.9 billion in losses.