Users believed that they were signing up for an affordable NFT drop offered by the famed artist, Beeple. However, that was not the case. The platform was compromised and convinced users that the affordable NFT drop was meant to coincide with his second Christie’s auction.
The admin account for Beeple’s official Discord group was hacked resulting in a phony NFT drop that saw several users lose around 38 ETH. One admin from Beeple’s Discord named “Multi” said that the group was hacked on November 10 despite having 2FA. The hacker went on to impersonate the Beeple Announcements Bot and Multi to promote a fake NFT drop from Beeple on Nifty Gateway.
That incident is one of the latest in a long line of Discord hacks that have caused massive losses for the users. Discord members were duped that Beeple was running a cheap drop after his most recent auction since he has already done that before. Some raffles saw several users get his NFTs for as little as $1.
Fans kept tabs on the Discord channel and Beeple’s Twitter throughout the day for an opportunity to get some bargain NFTs. One member, ‘NFT Simon’ said that he had his Metamask wallet ready to pounce on any lucrative deal that would come up.
He stated:
“When the post came up on the Official Beeple Discord, from the verified Beeple Bot and the verified Administrator with a link to a Nifty Gateway website I didn’t blink twice. I headed over and proceeded to mint as much and as fast as I could.”
NFT Simon thought he had got six Beeple NFTs, but he could not view them on his Nifty account. When he got back to Discord, he was deflated to discover that the fake admin was writing in all caps:
“I was greeted to multiple explicit Gifs of naked men coming from multiple users. It was a scam, and someone had hacked Beeple’s Discord.”
Around one hour later, the original admin regained control of the login and the chat turning to exposing the hackers’ wallets and reporting them to Binance. He said:
“Then we all watched them slowly but surely cash out our money, it was all too late.”
The alleged hacker’s wallet only has $9,121.54. Etherscan shows that the 25 ETH sent there was moved abruptly. Users say that more ETH was lost during this ordeal.
Discord group members offered a mixed reaction, with some of them quite calm while others regretted that they “FOMO’d” in without thinking. NFT Simon commented:
“I still don’t own a Beeple. I know Beeple stood up for the community once when we crashed Makers Place, who knows how or if he will right things this time. I’d certainly prefer six Beeples over my ETH back.”
Beeple’s official account is yet to address this incident directly. But, it posted a pinned message that reads:
“To everyone new, please know I will never be like HEY QUICK BUY THIS!!!!”
One user reacted to the pinned message:
“a calming and understanding announcement would make things easier to accept.”
“This was not a simple DM with a link, but a major security breach with no mods present that continued for about an hour.”
