Axie Infinity Discord Channel Hack

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Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is an NFT-based online video game developed by Sky Mavis, featuring Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies AXS and SLP. Players collect creatures called Axies, engaging in battles, breeding, collecting, raising, and building kingdoms for them within a player-owned economy. An incident involving the MEE6 Discord bot compromised Axie Infinity's Discord server. Attackers used MEE6 to grant permissions to a fake Jiho account and sent a false announcement about a mint. Although engineers removed the fake messages and the hacked bot, some users might still see the message until they restart Discord. While some allegations pointed at MEE6, the MEE6 team denied any unusual activity and stated they weren't contacted by real community owners.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About Axie Infinity

"Axie Infinity is a NFT-based online video game developed by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis, which uses Ethereum-based cryptocurrency AXS (Axie Infinity Shards) and SLP (Smooth Love Potion)." The "Axie Infinity game universe filled with fascinating creatures, Axies, that players can collect as pets. Players aim to battle, breed, collect, raise, and build kingdoms for their Axies. The universe has a player-owned economy where players can truly own, buy, sell, and trade resources they earn in the game through skilled-gameplay and contributions to the ecosystem."

"There are and will be many varied games experiences for Axies. Many of them will have players compete with each other using complex strategies and tactics to attain top rankings or be rewarded with coveted resources. Others will have them complete quests, defeat bosses, and unlock in-depth storylines."

"Ronin is a blockchain protocol linked to Axie Infinity, a popular play-to-earn game with $4 billion in NFT sales that sees over 2.8 million players logging on each day."

"The developer behind @AxieInfinity built a "side chain" (the @Ronin_Network)." "The side chain had nine so-called validator nodes, which are proof-of-stake tools that confirm transactions. At least five are necessary to approve each transaction. Sky Mavis oversaw five, and Axie Decentralized Autonomous Organization controlled four. Sky Mavis said it discontinued its agreement with the DAO in December but never revoked the permissions it allowed."

"MEE6 is a well-known Discord bot that is mostly used to automate roles and messages. Several crypto projects use it. The attackers used the hacked bot to give permissions to a fake Jiho account and then sent out a fake notification about a mint."

"The engineers were able to get rid of the fake messages and remove the hacked MEE6 bot from the main server. But the official Twitter account for the project said that many users would still see the fake message until they restarted Discord.

The developers also said that the MEE6 compromise is not new and that many projects have had problems like this before. But the official MEE6 Discord support channel said that they had checked with their engineers and found nothing strange."

"Many people think that the hackers first took over the admin accounts and then used MEE6 to get into the other admin account. This let them send webbook messages while hiding the fact that the administrator account had been taken over."

"There was a compromise of the Mee6 bot which was installed on the main Axie server. The attackers used that bot to add permissions to a fake Jiho account, which then posted a fake announcement about a mint."

"The announcements have been deleted but some users may still see the message until they restart their Discord. We have removed the Mee6 bot from the server and will never do a surprise mint."

"Major announcements will be announced on Twitter, Discord, Substack, and Facebook simultaneously."

"This was not unique to Axie and happened to many servers with the Mee6 bot installed."

"Although the MEE6 team stated that the allegations being directed towards MEE6 were “fake news”, as neither did they spot any unusual activity nor were they were contacted by any real community owners."

"The MEE6 support server although stated that the admin accounts of Axie Infinity’s Discord server were compromised, which enabled the hacker to use the MEE6 bot to post phishing messages and links in the channels."

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

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The Reality

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• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Axie Infinity Discord Channel Hack

Date	Event	Description
May 17th, 2022 9:04:00 PM MDT	Axie Infinity Tweet	Axie Infinity tweets about the Discrod exploit which happened.
May 18th, 2022 3:51:03 AM MDT	CoinTelegraph Article	CoinTelegraph publishes an article on the exploit.
May 18th, 2022 5:43:55 AM MDT	BitDegree Article	BitDegree publishes an article reporting on the Axie Infinity bot attack.
May 18th, 2022 7:44:29 AM MDT	NFT News Pro Article	NFT News Pro publishes an article on the Discord hack.
May 18th, 2022 9:20:31 AM MDT	CryptoPolitan Article	CryptoPolitan reports on the Axie Infinity Discore bot breach.
May 18th, 2022 12:34:15 PM MDT	FXEmpire Article	FXEmpire publishes an article, which is later shared to Yahoo Finance.

Technical Details

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Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost is unknown.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

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Ultimate Outcome

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Total Amount Recovered

The total amount recovered is unknown.

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Ongoing Developments

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Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

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Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

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Regulatory Prevention Policies

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