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Animoca Brands Founder Yat Siu's X Account Exploited to Promote Fake Token

The fake MOCA token on Solana exploited Animoca's links to Mocaverse and the Moca Network.

Updated Dec 26, 2024, 2:52 p.m. Published Dec 26, 2024, 1:59 p.m.

poly network attacker exploit hacker — (Pixabay, modified by CoinDesk)

What to know:

The X account of Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu was compromised and used to promote a fictitious token.
The fake MOCA token on Solana plays off the Moca Coin (MOCA) related to Animoca-linked Mocaverse.
The scam may be related a more than a dozen similar exploits that have occurred over the past month, according to ZachXBT.

The X account of Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu, one of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2024, was compromised and used to promote a fictitious token, the company said in a post on the social media platform.

Animoca, a metaverse and gaming venture capital firm, posted a warning on its own account at 01:36 UTC on Thursday saying Siu's account had been compromised and the company was not introducing an official token or non-fungible token (NFT).

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‼️🚨 Unfortunately @ysiu social media account has been compromised. 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.

We will provide an…
— Animoca Brands (@animocabrands) December 26, 2024

The exploit was probably perpetrated through a phishing email that purported to come from X and be related to copyright infringement, according to ZachXBT. The crypto exploit investigator posted on Tuesday about several similar attacks that took place over the past month, allowing the perpetrators to get away with about $500,000 at the time.

The false post from Siu's account promoted a token named MOCA on the Solana blockchain, according to a screenshot posted by ZachXBT.

Moca Foundation, a "community-owned foundation that aims to supercharge Mocaverse’s network effects," has its own Moca Coin (MOCA), which it describes as an "omni-chain network token." Mocaverse is an account and ID management system in which both Animoca and Siu personally have a stake,

According to a post from Mocaverse, control of Siu's account has been secured by X, which is in the process of verifying ownership. Related accounts remain untouched.

"There is no compromise on Animoca Brands, Moca Network or MOCA Foundation official handles, and there are strict security measures in place," it said.

Whoever is behind the fake MOCA token is active on memecoin-creation platform Pump.fun and has also created a number of NFT collections over the past two weeks, on-chain data show. The wallet holds about $67,000 worth of the USDC stablecoin, although it is unclear whether this is the direct proceeds of any phishing scams.

Oliver Knight contributed reporting to this story.

UPDATE (Dec. 26, 14:52 UTC): Adds wallet data from Solscan in last paragraph.

Exploits Yat Siu

Sheldon Reback

Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk editorial's Regional Head of Europe. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He managed the Bloomberg Terminal's main news page and also worked on a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. He previously worked as a journalist for a number of technology magazines in Hong Kong. Sheldon has a degree in industrial chemistry and an MBA. He owns ether and bitcoin below CoinDesk's notifiable limit.