On September 9, hackers broke into the X (formerly Twitter) account of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The attackers posted a phishing link leading to a site that supposedly hosted an NFTs giveaway "to celebrate Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum". The total losses account to nearly $700,000.
A screenshot of the post with the phishing link. Now deleted.
Proto-danksharding is the name of one of the scaling technologies that will be added to Ethereum in the future, according to the roadmap.
Details of the hack
The hackers posted a link to a fake site. When trying to get NFTs, users gave their permission to withdraw funds from their wallet, thinking that they were about to actually mine the token.
The same story happened with a whale who lost $24 million in a similar attack recently. You can read more about the mechanism of such hacks here.
According to a prominent on-chain analyst, @ZachXBT, the attackers collectively stole $691,000 in cryptocurrency and NFTs.
Among the stolen NFTs, the two CryptoPunks stand out: #3983 and #1751. They were sold for 153.6 ETH and 58.18 ETH, respectively.
Notably, both CryptoPunks belonged to a user named @BokkyPooBah, who claimed the loss of two NFTs in his X account. This is despite the fact that he is an experienced cryptocurrency user and developer on Ethereum.
How Vitalik Buterin was hacked
On September 12, on the decentralised social network Warpcast, an analogue of X, Buterin explained that someone managed to make a SIM swap and gain access to his X account through social engineering.
Source: Wrapcast.
Be extra careful when dealing with cryptocurrencies and never click on unverified links. Also, read our guide on how to avoid scams.
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