BAYC NFT project suffers second hack of the year, this time worth $270,000

• BAYC’s Instagram channels had been breached in April this year, with hackers posting fake airdrops.
  
• The exact amount stolen in the current hack could range between $250,000 to over $370,000.
  
• The hackers used a phishing attack through BAYC’s Discord servers.
  

NFT hackers may have taken their most high profile victim of 2022 for the second time this year, over the weekend. On June 4, crypto Twitter member OKHotshot posted that the Discord channels run by Yuga Labs had been hacked, leading investors to lose 145 ETH, worth over $270,000 at the time of writing.


Yuga Labs is the creator of two of the most popular NFT projects in the world — the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Otherside. BAYC alone posted lifetime trading volumes of over $2 billion, according to blockchain tracking platform DappRadar. It ranks number six on the tracker’s lists with over 13000 traders.

The scam, according to OKHotshot’s investigation was a phishing attack, which many users on the company’s servers fell for. The hackers posted messages promising limited-quantity giveaways for existing NFT holders, leading many to transfer their NFTs to the malicious wallets. OkHotshot also revealed some of these wallets.

According to blockchain security firm PeckShield, 32 NFTs were stolen, including some from the Mutan Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), a spin-off of BAYC. The security firm pegged the total losses at over 200 ETH, worth over $370,000 at the time of writing.


Yuga Labs hasn’t confirmed the hack yet.

Second attack this year

This is not the first time that BAYC has been hacked though. In April this year, hackers had breached the project’s Instagram account to post fake airdrops, which led to around 100 NFTs being stolen, according to reports at the time.

“There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything,” BAYC later said in a tweet on April 25.

BAYC, of course, is not the first project to fall victim to such an attack. On May 25, a user lost 29 NFTs from the Moonbirds collection, which were worth $1.5 million at the time. Another $1.7 million was stolen from users of OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces in the world, in February this year.

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