Even the world’s largest NFT marketplace like OpenSea can’t keep its channel safe from scammers. After attacking the Discord channel, hackers posted a fake announcement that OpenSea had “partnered with YouTube to bring their community into the NFT Space”. The announcement comes with a link to a phishing website. Users are enticed to click this link to grab one of 100 free NFTs with “insane utility” before they disappear forever.
The attacker seems to have stayed on the server for a significant amount of time before OpenSea staff were able to regain control. To instill the “fear of missing out” of the victims, hackers even reposted follow-ups to the initial fake announcement, re-emphasizing the fake link and claiming that 70% of the supply had already been minted. They claim that this offer is unique and there would be no further rounds to join. The official OpenSea Support Twitter account tweeted that the marketplace’s Discord server was breached Friday morning and warned users not to click on any link in the channel.
On-chain data shows 13 wallets that seem to have been compromised around the time of the attack. They are now also reported on OpenSea for “suspicious activity” and based on their price when last sold, appear to be worth at least $18,000.
“We continue to actively investigate this attack and will inform the community if there is any relevant new information. Our preliminary analysis indicates that the attack had limited impact. We are currently aware of fewer than 10 impacted wallets and stolen items amounting to less than 10 ETH”, OpenSea spokeswoman Allie Mack said.
OpenSea has not released a statement on how the channel was hacked, but it appears that the intruder used a webhook to access server controls. Webhook is a server plugin that allows other software to receive information in real time. Webhooks are increasingly used by hackers as an attack vector because they provide the ability to send messages from official server accounts.
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