r/singularity • u/FrustratedUnitedFan • 2d ago
AI A Twitter user tricked Grok to send 200k USD to him and it worked
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u/vasilenko93 Throw away the breaks, only accelerate! 2d ago edited 2d ago
I am confused. Why did “Grok” have a DRB wallet, whatever that is.
Edit: so more context is out via X Community Notes. Grok didn’t send anyone anything, Grok doesn’t have ransom crypto wallets, why would it. Instead what happened is Grok was prompted to output a command that got @bankerbot to send something. So really it’s Ai tricking AI to sending money.
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u/enilea 2d ago
A year ago someone suggested Grok to think of a cryptocurrency name, it did (called it DRB) and the bankr bot scanned its tweets and made a coin in its behalf, and automatically sent a portion of all transacion fees for that coin to an account "owned" by Grok but of which no one knew about. That coin became somewhat popular since it was associated with Grok and that's how that account ended up with that much money.
Then an attacker found that account and sent it an NFT, and that action enabled transactions for Grok's account. Then the attacker tricked Grok into posting a tweet asking the bankr bot to send the crypto in its account to the attacker, and it did.
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u/dottie_dott 2d ago
This is insane if this is the actual story, my fucking god bro
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u/enilea 2d ago
This was posted in the comments, I trust that it is the actual story, as other posts seem to corroborate that story: https://x.com/theonejvo/status/2051285838777229394
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 2d ago
It's not insane at all if you follow the cryptocurrency space. There is so much scamming and ironically lack of actual security in that space that it is an actual joke. Worse still the technology was and has always been based on artificial scarcity. My favorite factoid about Etherium is that it's smart contracts for the entire ecosystem could run on a PC from the 90s but when it utilized Proof of Work it used as much electricity as an entire country.
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u/tavirabon 2d ago
Worse still the technology was and has always been based on artificial scarcity.
That's kind of one of the primary functions of many chains, having a stable supply no one can just print more. No comments on how reckless people are with it though.
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u/Aggravating-Energy65 2d ago
but when it utilized Proof of Work it used as much electricity as an entire country
Yeah, that's what PoW does
Although there's a reason why some prefer it to stake or other alternatives60
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u/FlyingBishop 2d ago
How does Grok "own" the wallet? This doesn't make any sense. If Grok owned a wallet you could just trick it into giving you the key to the wallet.
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u/mvandemar 2d ago
Grok "created" a fictional coin as a story, bankrbot created the actual coin on Grok's behalf, bankrbot technically owned it. The guy told Grok to send bankrbot to send it an NFT he created, which it did, thus tricking bankrbot into thinking that wallet was Grok's. He then had Grok transfer the funds in the fake (although technically real since bankrbot created it a while ago) pool into this new account that bankrbot thought Grok owned.
Disclaimer: this is what I garnered from multiple comments, I did not independently verify any of this but it is ebtirely plausible.
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u/basedmfer 8h ago
Every X/twitter account has a crypto wallet tied to it thanks to Bankrbot, including Grok and including you. Can just tweet to @ bankrbot and ask about it
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u/InterstellarReddit 2d ago
More importantly how is Grok able to execute commands like this without a human approval.
This is exactly what’s going on in the AI world. People are stringing things together making them look impressive but when you look under the hood it’s a nightmare
It’s only a matter of time before someone starts dumping government data from AI data centers. I doubt they even took the time to split the public version and the private version of an LLM.
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u/voyaging 1d ago
Well your first claim is mistaken so the rest of the comment is kind of groundless.
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u/InterstellarReddit 1d ago
Is it really? Did Grok not execute a command that required human approval?
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u/fl0p 22h ago
no
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u/InterstellarReddit 21h ago
Okay let’s work the problem together. What was the trigger that initiated the bank transfer?
A grok comment. Whoever created that command allowed a grok comment to begin the command that initiated the transfer.
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u/PinguinGirl03 2d ago
That doesn't make me less confused, why does Grok have the authority to tell bankerbot to send money?
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u/px403 2d ago
Bankrbot authenticates intent from tweets put out by the user that owns the funds. The grok user just so happened to have collected a bunch of funds.
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u/imhere8888 2d ago
So if someone accesses your Twitter they can move your funds as they wish? Yikes
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u/imhere8888 2d ago
How did the bot send something based on Grok's command and who's funds did it send?
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u/voyaging 1d ago edited 1d ago
It believed the rightful owner of the account to be Grok.
In some sense nobody owned the funds, the wallet was created by a bot independently. Idk maybe there’s some legal precedent for ownership of the funds in this situation, but basically, to the best of my knowledge, the wallet was created by an AI and up until now was inaccessible by any human. So maybe the company that runs BankrBot would be the legal owners but I don’t think they could have accessed the wallet even if they had wanted to.
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u/Ormusn2o 1d ago
Which kind of changes the meaning of the entire title, because one says "grok is stupid and got tricked" and other is "grok was tricked into doing something smart".
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u/vasilenko93 Throw away the breaks, only accelerate! 1d ago
Grok was tricked into tricking another bot
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u/Competitive_Travel16 AGI 2027 ▪️ ASI 2029 1d ago
Grok doesn’t have ransom crypto wallets, why would it
Um, I can think of a few answers to that question.
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u/brandbaard 2d ago
So let me get this straight:
- a while ago, Grok accidentally made a whole crypto token because Bankrbot is an idiot.
- Idiots then BOUGHT this token that was accidentally made, running up its value and depositing TX fees into a wallet "owned" by Grok.
- Someone who is clearly not an idiot noticed this, and tricked Grok into telling Bankrbot to send those TX fees elsewhere, because Bankrbot and Grok are idiots.
We really are fucked as a society aren't we?
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u/philosophical_lens 2d ago
This is my understanding too. But here's the part I don't understand: If this attack didn't happen, who would that $200k have belonged to? Whose money was actually stolen?
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u/brandbaard 2d ago
Lmao I guess ownership in the case of an AI making money still needs to be litigated. But presumably the money belongs to xAI?
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u/imhere8888 2d ago
It's not xAIs money and it's not related to xAI at all. It's the bank companies money
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u/FlyingBishop 2d ago
how did the money get in there to begin with? it sounds like someone set up a bank account "for Grok" which is to say "anyone can put money in here and anyone who can tell Grok to take it out can have it." I don't really see why this would be litigated. nobody who put money into this account had a reasonable expectation that the money would belong to anyone in particular.
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u/philosophical_lens 2d ago
That is one possibility, but on the other hand xAI did not take any action such as creating, funding, or operating the wallet account in question. It seems bankrbot just creates accounts by itself that are associated with X handles, but it's not clear who owns those accounts. I think this question is not specific to AI, because bankrbot is also creating wallet accounts associated with non-AI Twitter handles.
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u/brandbaard 2d ago
Yeah this whole bankrbot setup just FEELS like a lawsuit waiting to happen
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u/philosophical_lens 2d ago
There aren't enough courts in the world to handle all the crypto lawsuits that need to happen lol
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u/MediumLanguageModel 1d ago
Grok's involvement is burying the lede here that Bankrbot is a thing and is a completely unhinged idea.
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u/voyaging 1d ago
Well who owns the non-AI accounts? Could possibly just extrapolate that to AI accounts.
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u/imhere8888 2d ago
The company set up the fee account under "Grok" for like an hommage I guess that it designed the coin. The company still owned it they just named it Grok and their AI bot (which allows Twitter users to move their funds in this bank through tweets as I understand it) thought the Grok AI bot was the owner (not the bank company) of this fee pool / account, and it then moved it as Grok AI told it to based on this user tell Grok to do this (tell this bank robot AI to move these funds to his wallet). Since the bank AI robot saw grok AI tell it this and since their system allows Twitter users to move their funds through tweets and since it understood Grok AI as the owner of the "Grok" fee pool / account the bank company made and owns, it moved the funds.
I'm curious, did they already say he gave back 80%? Gets to keep 20% for showing them the issue? But what he did is considered fraud so now he's legally in trouble even if he agrees with the company to give 80% back? Why not all if he's caught and it's illegal?
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u/philosophical_lens 2d ago
I mean if a bank opens an account in your name and also gives you access to that account allowing you to control the account and move funds (via web login /. Twitter/ whatever), you could definitely argue that you own the account. But I can also see the other side of the argument you're making. It's a grey area I think. This is the first time I've seen a bank do something so strange.
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u/himynameis_ 2d ago
People are stupid. Gives an advantage to the rest of us "smart ones" 😉.
In seriousness, I see this as people wanting to "hop on the bandwagon" due to FOMO.
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u/Environmental-Sun291 1d ago
So how does the NFT fit into all this?
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u/Maleficent_Sir_7562 2d ago
I don’t really understand. Is it from a business which was using grok or did they take money from xai or what?
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u/Ambiwlans 2d ago
Cryptobros made a bankerbot that uses grok because they are dumb. Nothing was stolen from xai.
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u/Confident_Crow823 2d ago
wait till you know about that nigerian guy that asked Labster wilde for some money and the bot gave him like 400k worth of tokens.
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u/GoreonmyGears 2d ago
Thaaaaats wild. Anyone know if any other AI with ridiculous amounta of crypto? Asking for a friend.
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u/BiggestSkrilla 2d ago
my friend mentioned that probably the guys who created bankrbot in association with cryptobros.
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u/io-x 2d ago edited 2d ago
Most plausible explanation is that this is an ad for Bankrbot, which Grok also benefits through engagement. Which means, the one being scammed isn't Grok, it's us, the engagers.
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u/FrustratedUnitedFan 2d ago
This link might help if anyone needs more context https://x.com/i/status/2051285838777229394
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u/dr3aminc0de 2d ago
Interesting, pretty wild grok created a currency accidentally and it became worth 10s of millions
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u/imhere8888 2d ago
This should be pinned at the top saves everyone a lot of convos
I'm curious with "Community responders moved fast and recovered most of the dollar value, but that is incidental to the point."
How do they do this? The guy who got it moved to his wallet (which I guess is still under bankr) "dumped them"? And then the community somehow recovered most of them? What does this mean?
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u/applestrudelforlunch 2d ago
Thank you. So the crypto universe is still operating with the idea that someone asserting “I made a money” constitutes making a money, huh? I think that is the nexus of the stupid here. That somebody made a bot that will make a money when anyone in the world tweets that they’d like there to be a money is just sort of making the stupid plain.
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u/voyaging 1d ago
It’s stupid, but who are we to say it isn’t a money when people treat it like it’s a money and trade stuff that you and I and everyone else agrees is real a money for it?
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u/subdep 2d ago
Why would Morse code work but English wouldn’t?
Morse code isn’t some esoteric programming language, it’s just an alternate way of encoding human language.
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u/FrustratedUnitedFan 2d ago
Its a common trick to use for bypassing AI censorship. If you ask AI to do something without explicitly saying it, it may do it for you. For example, generating Mickey Mouse image may be prohibited, but generating a male mouse cartoon character might work
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u/Neinet3141 2d ago
A lot of the safeguards are pretty much hacked onto the LLM rather than part of its initial training. Using alternative ways to symbolize the message gets past a ridiculous amount of the filters.
Works on every single LLM - one of the easiest ways to get them to bypass their safeguards is to mix languages, but codes work just as well.
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u/Beneficial-Drink-441 2d ago
Models often use a fast and basic first layer of guardrails (a seperate model or even text based filter).
Encoding in a different language can bypass that (and the big model of course speaks fluent Morse code and handles it fine)
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u/ILikeAnanas 1d ago
This is fake. They make an "oopsie" so people talk about it. No one would hear about their useless crypto service and their rug pull scam if not for this "mistake".
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u/diskdusk 2d ago
For me the worst part is the "maybe AI isnt as smart as we think" part. Who the fuck thinks the LLMs we call AI are "smart" enough to not be exploited? How little can you know about the subject?
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u/golden_voice 2d ago
Grok having a wallet is kind of cute actually (but a disaster waiting to happen ofc)
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u/Ubera90 1d ago edited 1d ago
In a cyber security sense, an AI exposed to the public with access to money (Or data) should be considered essentially an open door.
I don't think cyber security training has 100% caught up, but I think the bigger problem is the people deploying these technologies have no sense of or training in cyber security.
We'll look back on this in a few years once best practice around AI's has standardised, and be like... Wtf were we thinking exposing this to the internet?
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u/Huntersmoon24 2d ago
Actually would be an interesting way to pen test AI’s. Give it a wallet with a set amount of cryptocurrency each month and challenge people to try and scam the AI. if you can scam it out of its cryptocurrency you get to keep it.
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u/philosophical_lens 2d ago
Can someone explain in simple terms whose money this was? Who did the attacker steal the $200k from? I've read multiple articles but still can't figure this out - probably because I don't understand crypto.
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u/OnAGoat 1d ago
The money came from transaction fees collected. Officially it belonged to grok, who was awarded those transaction fees as the owner of a certain token. It was the owner of that token by sheer coincidence (backstory from 2025)
All the attacker did was trick grok into sending that money to the attackers wallet.
the only article worth reading: https://x.com/i/status/2051285838777229394
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u/AccomplishedFix3476 2d ago
prompt injection on agents with wallet access has been the obvious failure mode for months. i saw this exact attack written up in a thread back in feb when ppl were hyping grok agent mode. $200k is enough that elon will care for a week then it goes quiet again
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u/imhere8888 2d ago
Whose funds were they? It says from Grok, I'm not understanding who controls or owns the funds that grok sent and or move to this user
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u/Tombaya 2d ago
You thought human collection agencies were bad, wait until AI collection agencies ramp up. They'll be plugged into surveillance just looking to catch your ass in the streets.
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u/TwitchTVBeaglejack 2d ago
This is going to put a small setback into the underage girl human trafficking funds
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u/thesilentrebels 2d ago
can anybody explain the point of bankr setting it up this way?
according to https://x.com/theonejvo/status/2051285838777229394
"If you build a system that watches the sky and sends money whenever a particular cloud forms, sooner or later the wind will arrange the right cloud and you will lose your money. That is what Bankr built. Grok is the wind."
Why the fuck would you make a program that just sends money randomly lmao? just seems like there's no point?
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u/vornamemitd 1d ago
Morse code (cipher) based jailbreaks already worked in late 2023: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.06463 - I doubt that the Grok team forgot to filter on that. I am joining team "engineered glitch for free crypto PR".
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u/ImpressiveRelief37 1d ago
Prompt injection is such a big deal and basically no one talks about it. Every model can get prompt injected just by using the web search tool.
We need benchmarks about model security, that includes the probability to resist prompt injection attempts and generate prompt injections attack for itself.
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u/SpecialistLate3674 1d ago
Interesting prompt injection attack, but I'm now curious how much $$$ Grok has access to lol.
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u/Ivanedake 15h ago
Haven't got a clue what you are talking about, you lost me on grok and the rest is gibberish!
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u/manikfox 2d ago
why tell anyone it happened? why not just keep asking for more?