University of the Philippines’ Twitter Account Hacked by NFT Scammer

The official Twitter account of the University of the Philippines was compromised yesterday, the institution has confirmed.

Non-fungible token (NFT) scammers were behind the hack who renamed the University page to Japanese contemporary artist “takashi murakami”.

The institution said earlier in a press release that “the account has been renamed and has posted content not affiliated with the University.”

The tweets promoting fake airdrops have now been seemingly removed. The report claimed that the bad actor was promoting “free” NFTs that required people to pay gas fees.

At the time of writing, the account has been retrieved and the original display picture reinstated.

NFT scammers hijacking accounts is a recurring theme

This is not the first time NFT scammers have targeted government and university handles. Recently, a police complaint was filed in India when the University Grants Commission’s official Twitter handle was hacked in the country.

The UGC comes under the Ministry of Education under the Government of India and had a major following of close to 300,000.

The page reportedly made several posts and tagged a number of accounts after converting the profile into an anime-based Azuki NFT.

A fake Azuki NFT giveaway was also carried out on author and model Alexa Chung’s official Twitter account when it was hacked in Feb.

And this month, hackers managed to breach several official pages in India.  Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister’s Office, the Meteorological Department of India, and the Punjab unit of the Congress Party came under attack from NFT scammers. 

Similar posts populated these accounts, which stated, “In celebration of the reveal of the Beanz Official Collection, we have opened up an airdrop to all active NFT traders in the community for the next 2 hours!”

In Jan, the Twitter accounts of the Indian Council of World Affairs, the Indian Medical Association, and Mann Deshi Mahila Bank were compromised and renamed “Elon Musk”.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a victim when his account was briefly compromised in Dec by crypto scammers.

BAYC Hack

In a recent incident, the Instagram page of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) was hacked. The attacker managed to steal over $2.5 million worth of NFTs through phishing links.

Be[In]Crypto reported today that the owner of BAYC, Yuga Labs, said it was investigating the phishing attack and how the hacker managed to breach the two-factor authentication.

Before the BAYC incident, NFT scammers were eyeing Moonbirds collectors last week.