Hackers appear relentless in targeting the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, with perpetrators now accelerating attacks on the NFT sector. Bored Ape Yacht Club now becomes that latest NFT protocol to face the wrath of criminals on Ethereum chains.
On June 6, 2022, hackers exploited the vulnerability existing in manager accounts of Bored Ape Yacht Club‘s real estate venture “Otherside Metaverse,” stealing more than a quarter-million-dollar worth of NFTs in a phishing attack.
According to Peck Shield, a blockchain security firm, scammers sent out phishing links posed as “exclusive giveaways” to NFTs fans using username, stealing NFTs worth 200 Ether, which represent about $357,515.65 at the time of publishing.
The blockchain security firm revealed that 32NFTs were stolen late last week, including one Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT in a malicious phishing attack. By description, Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are Bitcoin-like digital assets that act as the certificate of ownership on a blockchain.
The recent data breach appears a few weeks after Bored Ape Yacht Club, the biggest player in the NFT game, suffered a similar hack in April. At the time, Bored Ape Yacht Club lost four Bored Ape and other NFTs that totaled $3 million.
Bored Ape Yacht Club Victimized Multiple Times
Peck Shield noted that hackers breached Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Instagram account and sent phishing links to members using the “BorisVagner” username. Notorious scammers leveraged the social media platform to entice members of discord groups with free tokens.
While expressing his dismay about the data breach, Jackie Moore, a global cybersecurity adviser, said that although Instagram attacks are nothing new in the crypto space, the close community over the Bored Ape NFTs would allow phishing attacks to have devastating success. He explained:
“This takeover has had a huge consequence and resulted in a mass robbery of digital assets. Similarly, when scammers stole physical art, there will be questions over how they would now be able to sell these assets, but the problems in NFTs still prevail. Users must remain extremely cautious of this still very new technology.”
The confidence in the Bored Ape Yacht Club among its community continues to shrink following another scam that left Actor Seth Green losing the copyright of his Bored Ape NFT last month. Green intended to use the NFT for an upcoming TV show.
On May 17, 2022, the 48-year-old actor announced that an unknown scammer stole the copyright of his cartoon version NFTs, which he prepared for his upcoming TV show “White Horse Tavern.”
The short script tokenized asset featured a bar in West Village of Manhattan and images one of the bartenders ‘Fred Simian,” who is part of an NFT called Bored Ape Yacht Club. In his short script, the animated character interacts with real actors in the 1880s bar.
Although Green halted the production as scheduled, he has promised to return it on social media, insisting that he can still broadcast the show since hackers stole Fred Simian and copyright regulation did not apply.
Notably, the perpetrator sold the tokenized character using an unregulated crypto market, meaning that the new owner could as well exercise a copyright claim if Green broadcast the likeness of Fred without permission.
