The popular NFT artist Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple becomes the latest victim of a phishing attack as his Twitter account got hacked yesterday with the scammers sharing a link to a raffle of a Louis Vuitton NFT collaboration.
Harry Denley, a security expert at cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask, confirmed that the phishing link would steal users’ crypto if clicked on.
The fraudsters were most likely attempting to profit off a legitimate recent collaboration between Beeple and Louis Vuitton. In its stand-alone mobile application game ‘Louis: The Game,’ Louis Vuitton released PFP NFT rewards last month developed in conjunction with Beeple’s Wenew Labs.
The hacker continued to exploit Beeple’s Twitter account to send phishing links to fake Beeple collections, enticing unwary people in with the promise of a free mint for unique NFTs.
The phishing links were live on Beeple’s Twitter for around five hours, and one of the scammers’ wallet reveals that the first phishing link netted them 36 ETH, approximately $73,000 at the time of writing.
The scammers got around $365,000 in the form of 62.35 ETH, 37.59 wETH, and 45 NFTs from collections including the MAYC, VeeFriends, and Otherdeeds, etc, by posting the second link. This takes the total value stolen from the hack to around $438,000.
According to on-chain data, the bad actors sold the NFTs on OpenSea and then transferred their stolen ETH into a crypto mixer to try to hide their profit.
Beeple later tweeted that he had gained control of his account and thanked Gary Vee, an NFT influencer and entrepreneur, and his team for their assistance. “Stay safe out there, anything too good to be true IS A FUCKING SCAM,” he noted.
This is not the first time Beeple’s social media account became a victim of hack attacks. Last November, Beeple’s official discord server got hacked, with the hackers profiting around approximately 38 ETH worth $176K before they were discovered.
