Hackers Steal $3M Worth Of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs With Instagram Hack
The Instagram account belonging to the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible token (NFT) collection was hacked on Monday. A phishing link was sent to users and was designed to steal NFTs. According to Gizmodo, the victims had three million dollars worth of crypto stolen from them.
“Approximate estimated losses due to the scam are 4 bored monkeys, 6 mutant monkeys, and 3 BAKC [Bored Ape Kennel Club]as well as a variety of other NFTs estimated to be worth a total of $3 million,” a BAYC spokesperson told Gizmodo.
The hacker, after compromising the Instagram account, posted a fake airdrop link to the new Otherside metaverse of the upcoming company’s project, which is due to launch later this week. OWN crypto airdrop is efficiently about publicizing new projects or services. The idea is to send tokens or NFTs to thousands of crypto addresses in the hope that more and more recipients will participate and promote the corresponding project. To receive an airdrop, users need to connect their crypto wallet where their NFTs are stored.
However, when users did, the scam site stole the digital assets from their wallets and transferred them to the hacker’s wallet. In a tweet, BAYC said: “This morning BAYC’s official Instagram account was hacked. The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copy of the BAYC website with a fake airdrop, asking users to sign a “secure transfer from” transaction. This transferred the assets from him to the scammer’s wallet.”
Upon discovering the hack, the BAYC team removed the fake links from the compromised Instagram account. “We will also not be announcing mints on BAYC or Otherside’s Instagram accounts first, ever. Please only get information from our official Twitter accounts,” BAYC said in a tweet.
As of now, it is not entirely clear how the hacker managed to get into BAYC’s Instagram account. The ape avatar platform claims the “hack occurred even when two-factor authentication was enabled on the account,” tweeted Gargamel, one of the founders of Yuga Labs. “The security practices surrounding the IG account were strict. by Yuga. Nothing important will ever be posted on Instagram again.”
The blockchain researcher, who goes by the handle @zachxbt on Twitter, searched the hacker’s wallet address and found that 4 Bored Apes, 7 Mutant Apes, and 3 Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs were among the large NFTs. stolen value. BAYC NFT is owned by celebrities including basketball icon Steph Curry, music artist Post Malone, and even American TV host Jimmy Fallon.
BAYC NFT scams have become quite prevalent. Last month, a bored ape-keeper who goes by the name ‘s27’ lost bubblegum monkeys and matching mutants worth $567k after swapping his NFT on an exchange called “Swap. Kiwi”. This platform allows direct exchanges of NFTs between collectors, at reduced transaction fees.
In other news, Yuga Labs, creators behind the popular collection of ape avatars announced to enter the world of the metaverse . This company’s metaverse project is called Otherside, which is intended to connect its massively multiplayer role-playing game with the larger NFT universe.
