The modern-day equivalent of an art heist has taken place with AU$3.5 million (US$2.5 million) worth of Bored Ape NFTs stolen in an Instagram hack.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Instagram account was infiltrated on Monday (April 25) leading to 134 NFTs transferred from the wallets of several users.
The Discord server was also hacked, with the hackers sending out an unofficial ‘mint’ link to followers that would give Bored Ape holders a free allotment of ‘land’ in the upcoming Otherside metaverse.
However, the link gave the hackers control over the crypto wallets of those who clicked the link.
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Bored Ape Yacht Club took to their Twitter, which remained unhacked, to alert users of the situation.
They said: “There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything.”
On their Discord channel, a moderator wrote: “THERE IS A FAKE LAND MINT WEBSITE BEING SHARED BY THE BAYC IG. DO NOT MINT ANYTHING.”
But it was all too late, with blockchain records showing the address received 134 of those funky monkeys.
The stolen assets included NFTs from Yuga Labs, such as Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, and Kennel Club NFTs.
Bored Ape Yacht Club provided a further explanation of exactly what happened in a statement on their Twitter.
They said: “This morning, the official BAYC Instagram account was hacked.
“The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the BAYC website with a fake Airdrop, where users were prompted to sign a ‘safeTransferFrom’ transaction.
“This transferred their assets to the scammer's wallet.
“Immediately upon discovering the hack, we alerted our community, removed links to the compromised IG account from our platforms and attempted to recover the account.”
However, the company were still investigating how the hacker gained access to their Instagram, claiming two-factor authentication was in place.
A Discord user claiming to be a victim of the scam was fuming.
They wrote: “They stole a bunch of s**t. I had a rare king mutant and a bunny ear mutant. stuff that would sell above floor.
"I just lost over 100 ether on this. F*****g unacceptable. From the official IG, the website looked real.
“I’m at the point where I have to sue Yuga over this hack. I'm not walking away from $300k because their s**t was hacked.”
The hacker has also already offloaded the stolen goods across NFT marketplaces OpenSea and LooksRare.
While OpenSea has marked the goods as ‘suspicious activity’ they can’t stop the NFTs from being sold.
According to PC Gamer and Motherboard, it is feared millions of dollars was stolen in total during the heist.
Topics: Cryptocurrency, Crime, Hacks
Jayden Collins