BAYC instagram hack. What did it lead to?

[Match Systems]

Today we're going to talk about a hack that resulted in a loss of approximately $13.7 million. How did this happen and will anyone return their precious NFTs to the victims of hackers?

 

 

What is BAYC?

    

Bored Ape Yacht Club Yuga Labs is a very famous project in the NFT world. The BAYC collection consists of 10,000 different monkeys, which differ in their attributes (fur, accessories, etc.).

 

Rappers such as Snoop Dogg and Eminem are recording a video starring the monkeys. Eminem bought an NFT from the BAYC collection for $450,000, putting it on his Twitter profile picture. Many pop artists and well-known athletes do not bypass these NFTs and spend a fortune on them. Obviously, the Yuga Labs monkeys have become part of the prestige.

 

At the peak of popularity, the creator of BAYC launched the Otherside metaverse, which the scammers played on.

 

Only Instagram and Discord were hacked 

 

On Saturday, April 30, 2022, people who pre-registered were able to participate in the Otherside Metaverse Mint.

 

Obviously, there was incredible hype around this entire issue, which the hackers took advantage of.

 

Phishing sites were most likely prepared in advance. When the hackers gained access to BAYC's Instagram and Discord accounts, they posted an airdrop announcement that included a phishing link.

 

The person who followed this link and connected his wallet instantly lost his funds because without knowing it he signed the “safe TransferFrom” transaction, which instantly transferred all assets to the attacker’s wallet.

 

After that, all NFTs were quickly sold on the “LooksRare NFT” platform at a price lower than the wETH market price. After the wETH token was transferred to a private wallet, then the funds were divided and sent to the accounts of five centralized exchanges. Then the hackers exchanged wETH for fiat or other tokens.

 

Yuga Labs claims that their accounts were as secure as possible and the security measures “were rigorous.” An investigation is underway as it is not clear how the scammers gained access to the accounts.

Damage

 

Yuga Labs claims that there have not been many victims, as the largest NFT platform OpenSea says. That is 4 NFT Bored Apes, 6 Mutant Apes, and 3 BAKS were stolen with a total value of $2.7 million.

 

Much more was stolen, according to OpenSea: 24 NFT Bored Apes and 30 Mutant Apes, totaling $13.7 million.

 

If you look at the Ethereum address of the hacker, which is marked as phishing:

 

https://etherscan.io/address/0x8c7934611b6ad70fbea13a1593de167a4689b9a9

 

then you can make sure that it received about 134 NFTs.

 

After the hack, a huge number of phishing sites similar to the official Otherside were created, so be careful.

 

As a result, enormous damage cost a packet for those affected by the hack and for the reputation of Yuga Labs itself.

 

 

Will victims get their NFTs back?

 

Probably not…

    

But, US law enforcement and regulators are already moving towards tightening up on crime in the NFT. In theory, this should somehow help the victims of theft, but no one will return the money to them.

 

Conclusion: you need to be more careful before you perform certain actions with your wallet on a third-party site. Always have a saved link to the official site and follow only it.

 

Have a nice and safe day!

Edited 13 Sep 2022, 12:16 by Match Systems

[Helber]

@Match Systems , 

In the Russian-speaking forum, posts can be published that are either 1) Written entirely in Russian, or 2) If you use native language (for example, English), please use Russian version duplicated in the same post. Google translate is allowed. 

Publications that do not match these rules are moved to sections "English" or "Other".
 

 

+Нарушение 3.11 («крикливое» оформление или неприемлемый формат текста)

Запрещается писать сообщение сплошь (или большей частью) ЗАГЛАВНЫМИ БУКВАМИ, жирным шрифтом, курсивом, подчеркнутым шрифтом, 

увеличенным шрифтом, выделенным цветом  и т.п. 

А также злоупотреблять слишком крупным шрифтом в заголовках и избыточным количеством смайлов. Стандартный шрифт - 14.

При copy-paste (вставке текста с другого ресурса) внизу окна ненадолго появляется линк «Вставить в виде обычного текста». Настоятельно рекомендуется его использовать для приведения текста к приемлемому формату.

Edited 13 Sep 2022, 13:22 by Helber