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A Bunch of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs Were Stolen (Again)

Panic at the Discord.

 & Nathaniel Mott Contributing Writer

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Someone made off with a bunch of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs... again.

CoinDesk reports that a hacker took control of the Discord account of Yuga Labs community manager Boris Vagner. That compromised account was then used to share phishing links to the official Discord channels for BAYC and Otherside, which Yuga Labs describes on its website as "a gamified, interoperable metaverse currently under development."

Yuga Labs confirmed the hack on Twitter:

The person who discovered the attack, "@NFTherder," says the hacker stole roughly 145 ETH as well as the BAYC NFTs. Coinbase puts the price of ETH at about $1,792 at time of writing. That means the hacker is believed to have made off with at least $618,000—approximately $358,000 worth of NFTs and $260,000 worth of Ethereum tokens—via this scheme.

This isn't the first time someone's made off with Yuga Labs NFTs. CoinDesk says a similar hack involving Discord occurred on April 1, and on April 25, the company's Instagram account was compromised so it could be used to steal $2.8 million worth of NFTs. Yuga Labs said at the time that collectors should only get their information from its official Twitter accounts... and Discord.

Now the company is warning potential customers about the contents of these phishing messages rather than saying they should only trust announcements made on specific platforms. "As a reminder," Yuga Labs says, "we do not offer surprise mints or giveaways." That seems like a sensible policy, but it probably isn't going to stop people from falling for these scams.

About Our Expert

Nathaniel Mott

Nathaniel Mott

Contributing Writer

I've been writing about tech, including everything from privacy and security to consumer electronics and startups, since 2011 for a variety of publications.

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