The hack of a major social media platform led to the theft of several NFTs from one of the most well-known non-fungible token collections of all time.
What Happened: Earlier this week, a hacker was able to take control of the Bored Ape Yacht Club official Instagram page from Yuga Labs.
A fraudulent link posted on the Instagram page said that users could mint land in the Otherside. Yuga Labs has an upcoming land sale for the Otherside on Saturday, April 30.
Anyone who connected their wallet to the link saw the loss of Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFTs.
CoinDesk reports that OpenSea transactions show that up to 24 Bored Apes and 30 Mutant Apes could have been compromised, with some NFTs being transferred to other wallets as a security measure being another possible reason.
If all 54 NFTs were stolen, the value would be around $13.7 million from the hack.
A spokesperson from Yuga Labs said it estimates that four Bored Apes, six Mutant Ape Yacht Clubs and three Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs were stolen, totaling around $3 million in value.
“The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the Bored Ape Yacht Club website, where a safeTransferFrom attack asked users to connect their MetaMask to the scammer’s wallet in order to participate in the fake Airdrop,” a Yuga Labs spokesperson told CoinDesk.
Yuga Labs and Instagram are investigating how the account was compromised. Instagram is owned by Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB).
Related Link: How To Buy NFTs
Why It’s Important: The hack of the Bored Ape Instagram page is another reminder for NFT investors to be careful when clicking on links and reading communications from teams.
The Bored Ape Instagram page is verified and has over 660,000 followers. Most followers of the team know that they use their Discord and Twitter to make official announcements.
Yuga Labs also announced the Otherside mint details over the last weekend, confirming that the sale would take place on April 30.
After the hack was realized, Yuga Labs enabled two-factor authentication and informed community members of the attack it received.
Yuga Labs is working to make contact with those affected, but has not said if it will compensate those who lost their NFTs.
OpenSea confirmed to The Verge that the hacker’s account was banned on the NFT marketplace due to the fraudulent transactions.
Price Action: The floor price for Bored Ape Yacht Club was 139.95 Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), or around $404,741 at the time of writing.
Photo: Courtesy of opensea.io
