The University of the Philippines has admitted that its official Twitter account was exploited. On Tuesday, NFT swindlers exploited and renamed the official Twitter channel of the popular University as “Takashi Murakami.”
UGC’s Twitter Account Has Been Recovered
Murakami is one of Japan’s popular artists. Part of the blog post from the institution concerning the exploit and the renaming of the channel states that “the institution is in no way affiliated with any Japanese artist and dissociates itself from any activity going on with the account.”
University of Philippines official update on the Twitter exploiting incident. Source: Facebook
Initially, after gaining control of the account, the exploiter started requesting that people pay gas fees and they will be given ‘free NFTs.’ However, he has removed the free NFT tweet. The good news is that the account has been recovered from the exploiter, and the university’s display picture has been restored.
NFT Swindlers Now Target Institution’s Social Media Accounts
There have been many instances of NFT swindlers hijacking social media pages or accounts. Still, recent trends suggest that these swindlers are now targeting social media accounts of the government and other institution accounts. Before this exploiting incident, one of the most recent similar incidents involved exploiting the India University Grants Commission (UGC) Twitter page.
The account with nearly 300K followers is regulated under India’s ministry of education. The exploiters who took control of UGC’s Twitter account started making various NFT-related posts. Then, they made several random posts, tagging several accounts in those posts.
Popular model and fast-rising author, Alex Chung, also suffered a similar fate at the hands of swindlers who exploited her Twitter account two months ago. Since the start of this month, the Twitter pages of many Indian agencies have been hijacked by exploiters and used to promote one NFT scam or another.
A common tweet among these exploited Indian agencies’ Twitter page reads, “we are opening an airdrop for all active NFT traders in this community as we celebrate the launch of the Beanz official NFTs. The airdrop will end in the next 60 minutes.” Some other Twitter handles of Indian agencies were also hijacked in January this year. Exploiters also didn’t spare the official Twitter handle of India’s pm. His official Twitter account was hijacked last December by crypto fraudsters.
Exploiters Also Hijack Instagram Pages
In a related development, exploiters hijacked BAYC’s Instagram page a few days ago. Following the exploit, some BAYC Instagram followers were scammed of $2.6M worth of NFTs as the exploiters introduced phishing links that these followers clicked unknowingly.
As previously reported, Yuga labs (owners of BAYC NFT collections) has announced that an investigation on the exploiting incident has commenced immediately, especially the security loophole the exploiters used to bypass the account’s 2-factor authentication. Before hijacking BAYC’s Instagram account, the exploiters are making several attempts to hijack Moonbird (another NFT collector)’s social media page.
Tokenhell produces content exposure for over 5,000 crypto companies and you can be one of them too! Contact at info@tokenhell.com if you have any questions. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Some of the posts on this website are guest posts or paid posts that are not written by Tokenhell authors (namely Crypto Cable , Sponsored Articles and Press Release content) and the views expressed in these types of posts do not reflect the views of this website. Tokenhell is not responsible for the content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products or any other content or banners (ad space) posted on the site. Read full terms and conditions / disclaimer.
