With much talk about NFTs and their value, more and more people are trooping to NFT trading platforms to learn the ropes as early adopters. But, as a fairly new concept altogether, users are prone to early adopter mistakes and attacks. Both of which NFT trading platform OpenSea has fallen victim to, for the second time in a row.
Barely three months after the first attack, another wave of cybercrime has hit the company. This time, the official website is safe, but, the OpenSea Discord channel took the fall. A scammer using a bot uploaded false information about a YouTube-OpenSea partnership that will offer free NFT items and minting, in effect attracting users to click on a phishing link.
Users who fell for this trick and clicked the fake giveaway link lost their non-fungible art collections to the attacker. The 13 artworks stolen by the scammer together have a value of $18,000. How the hacker was able to gain control of the OpenSea Discord channel is still unclear, but the company is currently investigating the theft. This isn’t the first time a phishing attack has hit a non-fungible token community, Bored Ape Yacht Club is a good example. These attacks play on users’ intelligence, prompting them to unsuspectingly give access to their wallets by clicking on malicious links.
The non-fungible token community is growing and should see a massive influx of users in the coming years. This should prompt platforms and companies that offer such services to build stronger resistance to hackers and cybercriminals. The issue of cybersecurity lies not only on the shoulder of service providers but also on individual users.
