A recent hack on Instagram allowed a hacker to rack up millions of dollars worth of non-fungible tokens (NFT) from the official Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) account.
After the NFT platform’s account was taken over, it allowed the scammer to post a phishing link which in turn transferred tokens directly out of the crypto wallets of various users.
“There is no mint going on today,” said a Tweet disclosing the news. “It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything.”
The warning came too late for many holders of the Bored Ape NFTs who not only had their tokens for the popular (and pricey) platform compromised, but lost other valuables in the process.
In a screenshot shared to Twitter, one user revealed the hackers OpenSea page that showed that they had been able to rack up over a dozen NFTs from the Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, and Bored Ape Kennel projects. Many assume that all of the valuables were taken from people who connected their wallets using the phishing link posted when the account was hacked.
While the evolving form of cryptocurrency is currently able to be purchased and sold for large amounts of money, the way in which they are stored is not the most secure.
Users often use crypto wallets via their smartphones as a method to holding on to their tokens which makes it an easy target for online hackers to effectively find ways, such as phishing links, to gain access to the virtual spaces that hold their valuables.
In this case, the stolen Apes are worth well over $1 million based on the most recent sale price with the lowest priced Ape, #7203 selling for 47.9 ETH just four months ago. The price is equivalent to $138,000.
The most significant of the stolen items is Bored Ape #6623 which sold for 123 ETH 3 months ago, equivalent to $354,500.