From a compromised Beeple account, a targeted phishing scheme nets $438K in bitcoin and NFTs.
To capitalise on a recent real partnership between Beeple and the luxury fashion company, links to a bogus Louis Vuitton NFT raffle were shared.
Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, a digital artist and popular nonfungible token (NFT) developer, had his Twitter account stolen on Sunday as part of a phishing attempt.
Users were warned by MetaMask security analyst Harry Denley that Beeple’s tweets at the time, which contained a link to a raffle of a Louis Vuitton NFT collaboration, were a phishing scheme that would drain crypto from users’ wallets if clicked.
⚠️ Beeple's Twitter account has been compromised (ATO) to post a phishing website to steal funds.
0x7b69c4f2ACF77300025E49DbDbB65B068b2Fda7D
0xF305F6073CFa24f05FF15CA5b387DD91f871b983 pic.twitter.com/0MPNwOPlEu— harry.eth 🦊💙 (whg.eth) (@sniko_) May 22, 2022
The con artists were most likely attempting to profit off a legitimate recent collaboration between Beeple and Louis Vuitton. Beeple produced 30 NFTs for the premium fashion brand’s Louis The Game smartphone game earlier this month, which were incorporated as player incentives.
The fraudster continued to exploit Beeple’s Twitter account to send phishing links that led to bogus Beeple collections that enticed naïve users with the promise of a free mint for unique NFTs.
Bad actors continue have access to Beeples Twitter account and they have now tweeted another phishing domain.
This one just prompts the user to send ETH to an EOA (0xcad7fc974F61A08ADEF110D1BA446fa5b5B5Bb27).
Infra: 44.227.238.106 pic.twitter.com/HzTga1OvNK
— harry.eth 🦊💙 (whg.eth) (@sniko_) May 22, 2022
The phishing links were live on Beeple’s Twitter for almost five hours, and an on-chain investigation of one of the scammers’ wallets revealed that the first phishing link netted them 36 Ether (ETH), which was valued over $73,000 at the time.
The second link netted the scammers roughly $365,000 in ETH and a slew of NFTs from high-value collections including the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, VeeFriends, and Otherdeeds, among others, bringing the scam’s total value to around $438,000.
According to on-chain data, the fraudster sold the NFTs on OpenSea and then transferred their stolen ETH into a crypto mixer to try to hide their winnings.
Beeple later tweeted that he had reclaimed control of his account, adding that “anything too good to be true IS A F*CKING SCAM.”
ugh we’ll that was fun way to wake up. 😫
Twitter was hacked but we have control now. Huge thanks to @garyvee ‘a team for quick help!!!! 🙏🙏🙏
— beeple (@beeple) May 22, 2022
Beeple is responsible for three of the top ten most valuable NFTs ever sold, including one that sold for $69.3 million, the highest price ever paid by a single owner. Because of his celebrity, he has been a target for hackers.
In November 2021, a Beeple Discord admin account was hijacked, with scammers advocating a similar phoney NFT drop, resulting in customers losing about 38 ETH.
Scammers are trying to cash in on the NFT buzz, according to a research released earlier this month by cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes. Scammers’ most popular approach, according to the business, is to exploit bogus websites that appear to be reputable platforms.
Looking for the biggest NFT marketing agency? NFT Boosts is one of the leading NFT marketing agency that offers effective nft marketing services with latest NFT news around the globe. Visit us today for more details.
This article is just for educational purposes.
Make your own exploration before making any form of investment, as always.
Possessors, holders, suckers, members of the community, jumbos. Want to give your composition a boost by putting it at the top of the homepage? == > Get in touch with us!
