A cyberspace fraudster reportedly breached the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)’s Instagram page and stole over $2.5M through the page. Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of thousands of Bored Ape NFTs.
Bored Ape Yacht Club disclosed on Twitter yesterday that someone hacked its social media page. The attacker reportedly utilized phishing techniques to cart away more than 2.5M USD in non-fungible tokens via the account.
The hacked Instagram account announced an ongoing mint, requesting the public to click specific links and give permission to access their digital wallets. When giving the details of the attack, BAYC said that the phishing attack stole different Bored Apes, including four tokens that each sold for approximately 1 million USD.
In the early hours of the 25th of April, the hacker announced a fake link to a semblance of the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s site. The fake website asked the visitors to append their signatures on a deal, which sent the tokens on the visitors’ accounts to the fraudster’s wallets.
The official hosts of the collections announced the attack to protect further visitors from the attack shortly after it noticed the hack. Yuga Labs, the mother organization for the Bored Ape Yacht Club, says it’s launching investigations on the hacker’s route into account holders’ wallets, despite the security measures.
Regarding the attack, CryptoGarga, the co-founder of BAYC, announced that they would contact the attack victims. CryptoGarga also announced that it would detail an account of its analysis of the hack later. The Instagram hack led to the attacker carting away different assets, including mutants, kennels, and apes.
The Instagram attack has had far-reaching negative impacts on Bored Ape Yacht Club’s public image. The project has different fans and critics and has been at the center of different controversies.
Not the First Hack on BAYC’s Tokens
The latest phishing hack isn’t the first hack on the collection’s assets. The penultimate hack occurred on the 1st of April, 2022, via BAYC’s Discord channel. The 1st of April attack on BAYC’s assets was also a phishing attack, during which the hacker announced a fake minting session ongoing.
The hacker reportedly stole one of the most famous apes and two tokens from musician Jay Chou’s assets. BAYC’s mother organization reportedly informed users to disable the server’s captcha bot.
The Chances of Subsequent NFT Hacks are High
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is renowned worldwide, with widely-known public figures buying costly assets from the collection of non-fungible tokens. An example is Madonna, who bought a token worth over 560k USD. However, several other popular celebrities have purchased an asset from the BAYC.
The expensive nature of these assets makes them top targets for hackers, who reportedly take advantage of unwitting newcomers to the investments. Additionally, as NFTs increase in popularity, more persons who have little knowhow of how to identify scams will purchase the tokens.
The chances are high that similar attacks would yet happen in the future as the industry gets more popular and accepted across different sectors.