More Than $100M Worth Of NFT Hijacked by Scammers Within 13 Months

Cryptocurrency risk management firm Elliptic released a report detailing the number of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which were stolen between July 2021 to July 2022.

According to the released report, more than $100 million worth of NFTs has been hijacked by bad actors. With the number of recorded attacks, it was assumed that an average scammer made away with about $300,000.

From the “NFTs and Financial Crime,” report, not considering the crypto winter and the plummeting price of digital assets including NFTs, more attacks were carried out in July 2022. The number of tokens pulled out of the market in July 2022 was around 4,600. 

However, the attack which carried more value was that of May 2022 which is estimated to be worth $23.9 million. The estimation of these values considered the fact that the recorded theft is not the actual number, it could be higher.

Analyzing the routes through which these attacks were carried out, it was discovered that over 23% of the scams stemmed from phishing messages sent to crypto users and from the social media platform Discord which was already compromised.

Other methods are malicious websites, cloned private keys, phishing emails redirecting users, and mobile wallet exploitation like in the case of Solana. 

Bored Ape is the Favorite of Hackers

In all of these attacks, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs experienced the highest attack. Per the published report, over 167 BAYC NFTs with an estimated value of $43.6 million were hijacked from the platform. 

This BAYC number was followed closely by Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Azuki NFTs respectively. On the Mutant Ape Yacht Club network, assets worth $14.5 million were stolen, while Azuki NFTs worth $3.9 million were similarly stolen. Other highly affected crypto platforms are Otherside and CloneX.

The report stated that “Together, these five collections constitute over two-thirds of the stolen NFT value since July 2021.”

From all indications, the crypto winter which commenced in May following the collapse of TerraUSD did not affect NFT theft. Rather, it increased seriously. Noteworthy is that it was in that May when the Terra crashed that NFT theft with more value was recorded.