In the time-honored tradition of Bored Ape Yacht Club holders losing their shirts to scams, another hacker has managed to fleece the masses. There’s a twist this time, though: the official Bored Ape Yacht Club Instagram was compromised. The attacker posted a link to a fake BAYC Metaverse land drop, and hoovered up NFTs from those who connected to it. Over 100 NFTs have been lost.
The situation is ongoing, and little is known at this time. The attacker’s wallet has a constant flow of NFTs into it even at this time. Details about how the attacker gained access to the official BAYC Instagram page have not been revealed.
The financial loss from the BAYC Instagram hack at time of writing totals over 931 ETH just in Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, and Bored Apes Kennel Club. That’s nearly $2.7 million USD just in those items. That’s not counting other valuable collections which have been stolen, or more tokens which are being compromised currently.
Internet sleuth ZachXBT (one of our best crypto twitter accounts to follow) mapped out the fund flows from the attacker’s wallets. They flow to centralized exchanges, so there is some hope that law enforcement can act. This may not always be possible, though, and even if they are caught the users are unlikely to be compensated for their loss.
Basic rug protection is mostly just common sense. Don’t connect your wallet to random sites. “Surprise mints” are 99% rugs. The team will never DM you. These victims just signed a straight-up transfer to send their NFTs to someone else’s wallet. Good grief.
Stay safe out there, anon. I’ll update this post as we learn more from the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Yuga Labs team.
