NFTs are still a young phenomenon, though it’s already given celebrities another way to make some dough (or to just bore TV audiences). It’s also already become a target for thieves and scammers. Earlier this month, one lover of non-fungible tokens, whose Twitter handle was actually “ILovePonzi,” lost a large collection to a scammer. And on Saturday, the NFT world freaked out over hackers who’d nabbed nearly $2 million in digital doodads.
This comes from Vice, who report that someone or someones have been stealing and flipping NFTs on OpenSea, the internet’s largest exchange for digital collectibles. A warning on the service warned of a possible phishing operation and warned users to “not click links outside of opensea.io.” Those who’d been hit lost a number of high-end NFTs:
Blockchain records show that the attacker was able to transfer numerous NFTs from different users to their address for free. Stolen NFTs included examples from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and several other popular collections. The attacker has already sold some of the NFTs, for example, this NFT from the Azuki collection for 13.4 ETH ($36,380). The attacker’s wallet currently contains more than 600 ETH worth nearly $2 million.
That said, the hacker(s) did wind up returning some of their pilfered NTFs. Numerous tokens were returned to one user, save one, which remains frozen on OpenSea. Users of the service have been required to upgrade to a new contract, which fixes an issue that allowed hackers to nick valuable digital collectibles from unsuspecting users. So if you’ve spent a pretty penny on Bored Apes, best be careful.
(Via Vice)