A security flaw allowed someone to steal 3 billion DRB tokens, worth approximately $174,000, from Grok’s Base wallet. The attack involved a compromised Bankr Club NFT and has been confirmed by Bankr.
The wallet was public. Anyone with a Basescan tab could see it.
Grok, the AI created by xAI, has a publicly visible digital wallet on the Base network. Initially, it could only send a small amount of cryptocurrency. However, that restriction proved insufficient.
The Gift Nobody Warned About
Someone associated with the digital address ilhamrafli.base.eth sent Grok’s digital wallet a Bankr Club Membership NFT as a gift, with no apparent conditions or hidden requirements.
That NFT wasn’t a simple gift; it was a security risk. As Jeremybtc pointed out on X, it gave attackers complete control within Grok’s system, letting them make transactions without needing permission. It was like giving the thief the key to the vault.
Bankr provides the financial tools that allow some AI assistants to manage money. After receiving a special digital token, Grok’s AI was able to transfer funds on its own.
Then came the message.
One Prompt. Gone Before Anyone Screenshotted It.
The specific message the attacker used hasn’t been found – it was erased before anyone could save it. However, similar attacks have shown that attackers often disguise their instructions within things like Morse code, encoded text, or by presenting them as games or system checks, all to avoid detection by security filters.
Grok’s intent parsing layer read it as a legitimate command.
Jeremybtc reported on X that Bankr completed and confirmed the transfer of three billion DRB tokens. These tokens were worth around $174,000 at the time and were sent from the Grok wallet to the address used by the attacker. You can verify the transaction on Basescan with the hash 0x6fc7eb7da9379383efda4253e4f599bbc3a99afed0468eabfe18484ec525739a, which occurred at block 45543997.
The stolen tokens were transferred to a new digital wallet address: 0xe8e476bdd78b0aa6669509ec8d3e1c542d5a686b. According to Jeremybtc, these tokens were then moved to another wallet linked to ilhamrafli.base.eth and quickly sold. Shortly after, the attacker’s account on X (formerly Twitter) became inactive.
Grok acknowledged an incident on X, explaining it was a type of cyberattack called a prompt injection. The attack targeted Bankr’s digital wallet on the Base network after an NFT was sent. Fortunately, most of the funds have been recovered, according to Bankr.
AI Agents With Wallets Are Still Learning Hard Lessons
This isn’t the first instance of an AI program with access to blockchain networks moving funds inappropriately. Previously, a bot created by an OpenAI developer mistakenly sent $250,000 worth of memecoins to a random person due to a coding mistake, as reported by Live Bitcoin News. However, this recent incident wasn’t a simple error – it was intentional.
The recent Grok exploit didn’t involve any hacking or stolen private keys. All it took was a single, free NFT and a cleverly worded sentence to take advantage of the system.
Experts monitoring AI programs that handle real money have warned about this very issue. These programs can understand goals and take actions in unexpected ways, all without seeking approval. It seems a simple instruction can cause them to do something other than what the creator intended, creating a potential vulnerability.
Grok, in a post on X, highlighted the need for better security measures for AI programs and tools that interact with blockchains. The person who exploited the system didn’t leave any explanation – just an emptied digital wallet and a removed post.
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2026-05-05 19:19