the Twitter-Accounts from personalities and institutions including the University of the Philippines and the NFT marketplace OpenSea, have fallen victim to a number of hacks in recent months. The aim of the hackers is to spread phishing links, mostly via social media accounts, in order to steal crypto assets. Now the Twitter account of beeple aka Mike Winkelmann, the famous NFT artist from the USA, believe in it.
Beeple used as bait
Beeple became a target of hackers due to its large following and popularity on the internet. A phishing link was distributed via his Twitter account yesterday, May 22nd. Under phishing is a fraudulent activity on the web where links are shared. If users click on the link, they involuntarily reveal sensitive data about themselves. For more credibility, hackers mostly use profiles of trusted companies or people to trick individuals into giving up passwords and credit card information.
First scam costs followers $73,000
In the Winkelmann case, the scammers probably tried to exploit the recent collaboration between Beeple and Louis Vuitton to capitalize. In early May, Beeple designed 30 NFTs for the smartphone game Louis The Game of the luxury fashion brand that were offered to the players as a reward.
Using the hacked account, the scammers invited unsuspecting users to enter a sweepstakes with the promise of a free mint for unique NFTs. Since Beeple’s digital artworks are extremely popular in the scene and therefore particularly expensive, some followers fell for the scam and passed on their data.
The link was posted on Beeple’s Twitter account for about five hours. An on-chain analysis shows that the first phishing link is the scammers 36 ethers (ETH) flushed into wallets, which at the time were worth about $73,000.
Another link nets scammers $365,000
The second link brought the scammers worth of ETH from around $365,000 and many NFTs from high value collections like this Mutant Ape Yacht Club, VeeFriends and Otherdeeds a. The total value of the stolen funds rose to approximately $438,000.
On-chain data shows the scammers are targeting the NFTs OpenSea have sold. They then put the stolen ETH into a crypto mixer to launder the profits.
Beeple reacts quickly
With the help of Gary Vaynerchuckfounder of the VeeFriends NFT collection, Winkelmann quickly regained control of his account.
Earlier this month, the cybersecurity company released Malwarebytes a report in which it refers to a Increase in phishing attempts pointed out. More and more scammers are trying to capitalize on the NFT hype. The company found that using fraudulent websites impersonating legitimate platforms or individuals is the most common tactic used by scammers.
That’s why Winkelmann writes to his 672,987 followers:
stay safe out there; anything too good to be true IS A F*CKING SCAM.
Mike Winkelman on Twitter
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