- The Twitter account for noted digital artist Beeple was hacked over the weekend
- The hackers advertised a Louis Vuitton collaboration and a raffle, with a 1 ETH contribution
- This and a second hack netted them $438,000 in W/ETH and NFTs
A two-pronged hack on the Twitter account of noted digital artist Beeple has landed the hackers $438,000 in W/ETH and NFTs. The breach, which happened yesterday, saw Beeple’s Twitter account taken over and two different NFT collections, one a Louis Vuitton collaboration, used to solicit W/ETH and then NFTs from unsuspecting followers. Beeple confirmed the account had been hacked and he had resumed control some hours later, but not before dozens of people had parted with 136 W/ETH and 45 NFTs.
Beeple Hack Utilized Louis Vuitton ‘Collaboration’
The hack on Beeple’s account, real name Mike Winklemann, was reported at the time by Harry Denley, a Security Analyst at MetaMask, who alerted users that Beeple’s tweets, which included a link to a raffle of a Louis Vuitton NFT collaboration, were in fact a phishing scam:
⚠️ Beeple’s Twitter account has been compromised (ATO) to post a phishing website to steal funds.
0x7b69c4f2ACF77300025E49DbDbB65B068b2Fda7D
0xF305F6073CFa24f05FF15CA5b387DD91f871b983 pic.twitter.com/0MPNwOPlEu— harry.eth 🦊💙 (whg.eth) (@sniko_) May 22, 2022
The tweet said that entry to the raffle would be 1 ETH, and indeed the contract called for 1 ETH to be taken from the account of anyone who clicked on the link, but of course there was no raffle and the funds were withdrawn from the account.
Further tweets for fake NFT collections continued, leading to victims being drained of $365,000 worth of W/ETH and NFTs, including from high-value collections such as Mutant Ape Yacht Club, VeeFriends, and Otherdeeds.
Scammers Still Finding New Targets
Winklemann finally resumed control of his account, warning that he would “anything too good to be true IS A FUCKING SCAM” and that “there will never be a SURPRISE MINT I mention one time in one place starting at 6am Sunday morning”:
Stay safe out there, anything too good to be true IS A FUCKING SCAM.
And as side note, there will never be a SURPRISE MINT I mention one time in one place starting at 6am Sunday morning. 🤦♂️
— beeple (@beeple) May 22, 2022
It seems that the message still hasn’t got through to everyone however, despite the fact that the crypto and NFT space is famed for its scams.
