Beeple's Twitter Account Falls Victim to Phishing Attack, Hackers Steal $438,000 in Ether, NFTs

Beeple aka Mike Winkelmann is among the most popular digital artists in the world.

By Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee | Updated: 23 May 2022 15:04 IST

Beeple's Twitter Account Falls Victim to Phishing Attack, Hackers Steal $438,000 in Ether, NFTs

Photo Credit: Christie's

HUMAN ONE, created by Beeple was sold at Christie's for $28.9 million (roughly Rs. 215 crore)

Highlights

Hackers carried out two attacks through malicious links
NFT hacks have seen a preposterous rise in 2022
Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million at Cristie's in March 2021

Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known on Twitter as Beeple, had his account on the microblogging platform hacked as part of a phishing scam that appears to have stolen roughly $438,000 (roughly Rs. 3.4 crore) in Ether and NFTs. According to the non-fungible token (NFT) artist and others on Twitter, including MetaMask security expert Harry Denley, Beeple's account temporarily shared a fake link seemingly to a website of a collaboration with fashion designer Louis Vuitton that, if clicked on, would steal users' crypto.

The tweet shared a link to a dodgy website pretending to be a "raffle" of Beeple's Louis Vuitton collaboration. But when people clicked on the link, one Ether was automatically drained from their wallets, according to Denley. Winkelmann had collaborated with Louis Vuitton on an NFT raffle for the luxury fashion brand's mobile game “Louis: The Game” in April.

Stay safe out there, anything too good to be true IS A FUCKING SCAM.

And as side note, there will never be a SURPRISE MINT I mention one time in one place starting at 6am Sunday morning. 🤦‍♂️
— beeple (@beeple) May 22, 2022

According to a follow-up tweet by Denley, a second more sophisticated attack followed the raffle link through which the attackers raked in a lot more Ether than they did with the first link that was shared.

If we assume everything is secure, at time of this tweet the bad actors managed to scam:

Scam #1
36ETH (~$72k)
0xf305 is yet to withdraw

Scam #2
62.35ETH (~$125k)
37.59WETH (~$75k)
45 NFTs (est ~$166k)

Total = $438k (active for ~5hours)
— harry.eth ???????? (whg.eth) (@sniko_) May 22, 2022

The first attack netted 36 Ether, worth more than $70,000 (roughly Rs. 54.5 lakh) and the second about $365,000 (roughly Rs. 3 crore) in ETH and NFTs.

Beeple, who has more than 472,000 followers on Twitter, later tweeted that his account was back to normal and "we have control now."

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The digital artist, aged 40, grabbed headlines in March 2021, when an NFT of his work sold for $69 million (roughly Rs. 535 crore) at popular auction house Christie's.

According to a report from earlier this month by Top10VPN, a global digital privacy and research group, NFT hacks have led to losses of almost $52 million (roughly Rs. 403 crore) in the first four months of 2022 alone compared with less than $7 million (roughly Rs. 54.5 crore) over the whole of 2021.

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