Beeple’s Followers Scammed Of $400,000 As Hackers Take Control Of His Twitter
Oops, there’s been another scam in the land of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In April, collectors of the famed Bored Ape Yacht Club had over US$3 million of digital tokens stolen when its official Instagram account was hacked, with the bad actors walking away with four Apes, six Mutants, three Kennels, and other assets.
Now, Beeple, one of the leading figures in the industry—yes, the artist who sold a jpg for US$69 million—has been hacked too, with his Twitter account posting a phishing link that incurred losses of over US$400,000 in cryptocurrency and virtual assets.
As reported by Artnet News, hackers had gained access to Beeple’s Twitter account for five hours, during which they tweeted two different links promoting a raffle for a special collaboration with Louis Vuitton.
“Been working on this with LV for a long time behind the scenes. 1000 total unique pieces… Official Raffle Below. 1 ETH = 1 Raffle Entry. All non-winning entries are refunded post raffles. Good luck,” read one of the fake tweets.
Upon clicking on the links, unsuspecting fans were brought to a phishing website that would drain victim’s wallets of Ethereum and high-value NFTs, including those from the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, VeeFriends, and Otherdeeds.
Despite a MetaMask security employee flagging the posts as suspicious soon after, the hackers had unfortunately already made off with a large chunk of change. In a series of tweets, Harry Denley tracked the estimated losses, saying that in total, over US$438,000 could’ve been stolen in the hours-long scam.
According to ARTnews, Beeple recovered ownership of his account yesterday, tweeting to tell followers that “anything too good to be true” was a scam, and that he would never launch a surprise mint at 6am on a Sunday morning.
In a conversation with a site, the artist said it was currently impossible to tell how much money was stolen, and that any fan could create a wallet and make it appear that they had lost money before asking for a fraudulent refund.
With phishing attacks occurring more frequently in the NFT world, could there be new security measures in place to ensure fans don’t lose cryptocurrency or assets to bad actors? It’s certainly food for thought.
Stay safe out there, anything too good to be true IS A FUCKING SCAM.
— beeple (@beeple) May 22, 2022
And as side note, there will never be a SURPRISE MINT I mention one time in one place starting at 6am Sunday morning. 🤦♂ï¸
[via Artnet News and ARTnews, cover image via Beeple]
