India’s Ministry of Education was one of the latest victims in a series of hacks against verified Twitter accounts promoting fake Azuki non-fungible token (NFT) airdrops.

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Fast facts

• India’s University Grant Commission (UGC), which has more than 295,000 followers on Twitter, was hacked on Sunday.

• The hackers changed UGC’s bio to that of the co-creator of Azuki NFTs and swapped the profile photo with that of an Azuki-related image.

• UGC, a statutory body set up by the Ministry of Education to coordinate and maintain standards of higher education across India, recovered the account after six hours.

• The scammer then posted a link for recipients to claim a secret airdrop of Beanz, an NFT that was distributed to holders of Azuki NFTs in the past week.

• Claimants were directed to connect their Ethereum wallets; however, those unwitting account holders accepting the invitation were at risk of losing the NFTs held in the wallets.

• Similar exploits were reported by other verified accounts belonging to journalists and media personalities over the past week.

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