TL;DR Breakdown:
- BAYC’s Instagram was temporarily hacked by a scammer for a phishing attack on investors.
- About $2.5 million was reportedly lost in the attack.
- The Instagram page has been recovered, and Yuga Labs asked to contact affected users.
Popular Ethereum NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) temporarily lost control of its Instagram page on Monday, resulting in the loss of users’ NFTs worth about $2.5 million via a phishing attack.
BAYC suffers another phishing attack
From the Instagram page, the scammers redirected the followers to a copycat of BAYC’s website for a fake airdrop. The unsuspecting investors were lured into clicking a malicious link and connecting their wallet addresses to the fake website. “This transferred their assets to the scammer’s wallet,” the BAYC team explained.
About “4 Apes, 6 Mutants, 3 Kennels, and some other assorted valuable NFTs” were lost in the phishing attack, according to Gargamel, the co-founder of Yuga Labs, the blockchain development firm behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club project. The value of the NFTs lost to the scammers is estimated at around $2.5 million.
We will be in contact with the users affected and will post a full post mortem on the attack when we can.
Yuga Labs Co-founder, Gargamel.
The biggest NFTs are target
The growth and popularity of the NFTs market have made the space more susceptible to attacks and scams – rug pulls. It’s worth noting that BAYC was once in the new in March for a phishing attack. Cryptopolitan reported that the project’s Discord channel was compromised, resulting in the loss of a Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT via a phishing attack. The NFT stolen was worth about 21 ETH or $68,000 at the time.
Hackers tend to evolve as more security comes into the NFT and cryptocurrency space. However, users are implored to conduct due diligence by not sharing sensitive information on public platforms, or clicking on random links sent by an unknown person.
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