NFT Users Lose $2 Million in Phishing Attack

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are quickly becoming the most expensive collectable items on the market today. These NFTs allow investors to buy and sell unique digital assets as if they were real-life paintings. One of the most popular marketplaces for these tokens, OpenSea, has started to deal with the issues that come with trading high-value assets. Following a migration to new technology on February 17th, seventeen (17) users found their NFT accounts completely emptied. The hackers took advantage of OpenSea’s announcement of the migration to phish the users. Some attackers took the email OpenSea legitimately sent to its users announcing the change and changed the hyperlinks to point to a phishing website. This website would then ask the users to sign a transaction that looks similar to a legitimate transaction example found on OpenSea’s blog. By clicking the “sign” button, the user would unknowingly send all of their NFTs to the attacker’s wallet. For the seventeen (17) users affected, more than 250 NFTs were stolen worth around $2 million. While OpenSea itself was not breached, they are looking into the issue and are exploring possible solutions to this growing issue. Though this wave of attacks has stopped, users are encouraged to be cautious when clicking on links from emails regarding their NFT accounts.