Beeple, the famed digital artist that caught the attention of the NFT space with his work Everydays: The First 500 Days NFT has suffered a Twitter hack. His twitter account was compromised by malicious actors and his followers scammed. A security analyst at MetaMask alerted followers on Sunday about the attack. The scammers took advantage of Beeple’s previous work with luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton.
The hackers who took control of Beeple’s Twitter handle made away with over $400,000 from some of his followers, through a phishing attack.
Beeple Regains Twitter Account
Beeple on Sunday announced on his twitter handle that he has regained control of his hacked account. He also further thanked Belarusian- American media mogul Gary Vaynerchuk and his team for their help.
He tweeted to his over 600,000 followers on Sunday:
“ugh we’ll that was fun way to wake up.
Twitter was hacked but we have control now. Huge thanks to @garyvee ‘a team for quick help!!!!”
He also added a warning to his fans to stay safe, since anything too good to be true is a scam.
Beeple’s message came after a tweet by a MetaMask security analyst Harry.eth alerting Beeple followers to the hacked account.
The analyst tweeted that:
“Beeple’s Twitter account has been compromised (ATO) to post a phishing website to steal funds”.
Analysis of Beeple Hacked account
Furthermore, Harry.eth gave an analysis of the situation in his Twitter handle. In the tweet, he shared a screenshot of the fake tweet by the hackers. And it quoted Beeple as saying:
“Been working on this with LV for a long time behind the scenes. 1000 total unique pieces.
BEEPLE X VUITTON COLLECTION_1: BEEPLES”
The tweet also added some details about the fake mint.
“Official Raffle Below
1ETH=1Raffle Entry
All non-winning entries are refunded post raffle”
And ended with the link to the fake mint site.
Further investigation showed that once your wallet gets connected to the site. It will initiate a mint and send 1ETH to the contract. But according to Harry.eth the contract was not weaponized to drain wallets by filling wallet transaction queue like the others.
Now, the contract that receives the transaction was every shade of fishy. It is a 721 contract with mint function defined as “The owner of the contract can withdraw the funds at any moment”. Which means that the actors could make away with their loot unhindered.
After the first tweet, the bad actors also added another phishing domain for a fake mint in a tweet. This time the hackers promised a free mint.
“Had felt the need to release more NFTs from my collection behind the Scenes. 200 unique pieces.
BEEPLE – SPRING/SUMMER COLLECTION
Official minting link below.
FREE Mint! 200 UNIQUE pieces for everyone!”
The fake tweet stated.
According to harry.eth, this one was a little more sophisticated than the first, it even had a Discord C2.
Finally, The estimated losses from the two phishing attacks that lasted for roughly 5 hours was $438k. Harry.eth came to the figure and communicated it in a tweet.
