In Brief:
- Digital artist Beeple’s official Discord channel was hacked overnight.
- The hackers used the Beeple Announcements Bot to promote the fake NFT drop from Beeple on Nifty Gateway.
- Channel users lost almost 38 ETH following the hack.
The renowned digital artist Beeple’s official discord server got hacked just before his second auction on Nifty. As a result of which a fake NFT drop occurred.
According to an admin in the official Discord group named “Multi,” the hackers used the official Beeple Bot to announce a fake NFT drop. The breach occurred despite the use of 2 Factor authentication.
The hackers managed to tempt enough users to gain approximately 38 ETH worth $176K before they were discovered and reported.
The discord channel admin couldn’t find the account until the fake NFT drop ad had run for an hour. This made blocking the wallet address nearly impossible and the users saw their money being taken by the hackers.
Users who lost money as a result of the hack demanded proper communication, particularly for auctions like these.
The fake NFT drop was more believable because Beeple is already famous for its secondary drop after the success of its first NFT sale. As a result, his followers believed it as a reality.
One of the users said, “When the post appeared in the Official Beeple Discord from Verified Beeple Bot and Verified Admin with a link to the Nifty Gateway website, I didn’t blink twice. I’ll get to the top and keep throwing as much as possible.”
Instead of using a bot or a pinned message, the channel users suggested that the admin looks for other ways to help users distinguish between real and fake announcements.
JBeeple is a well-known NFT artist. His NFT titled ‘Human One’ for $28.9 million at Christie’s yesterday. This NFT is said to be updated periodically throughout Beeple’s career..
