Some high-profile, verified Twitter accounts have apparently been hacked in recent days in an attempt to attract new consumers into Azuki NFT scams. The series of attacks mostly targeted India’s official government organisations, as well as the Twitter accounts of local journalists and media.
Hacker changes profile of official accounts
Multiple official accounts, including those of the government of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the Ministry of Education, the National Congress, the University Grants Commission, and the Meteorology Department, have been hacked in the last few days. The hackers changed their profiles to imitate the popular anime-styled Azuki NFT collection creators in an attempt to lure victims into a fake airdrop scam in order to steal their NFTs.
Apart from government accounts, the scammers also targeted local Indian journalists and officials with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers.
The scammers circulated thousands of tweets urging followers to link their wallets and partake in a “secret Beanz airdrop,” which was previously only accessible to current Azuki NFT owners.
What is Azuki?
Azuki, the 10,000 anime-themed NFT avatar collection released in January, has become one of the most traded NFT collections of all time in recent months. With an average selling price of 8.27 ETH, Azuki NFTs were sold for 178.8K Ethereum (worth roughly $568.5M at today’s values). Azuki NFTs are among the top ten most traded collections on OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace.