In a phishing attack on Tuesday, the venture capitalist and crypto expert lost more than 55 NFTs of famous series. The NFTs got spotted because the victim had left his millionaire collection in a hot wallet.
The founder of Web3-focused venture capital firm DeFiance Capital, Arthur Cheong, lost his non-fungible tokens (NFTs) valued at more than $1 million in a phishing attack that occurred on Tuesday.
As highlighted by The Block, an unknown attacker started the extraction of NFTs from an Ethereum wallet managed by Cheong. The founder went to his Twitter account to reveal the news on the attack, expressing his concern, given his vast expertise in the crypto-space. The expert said the hacker damaged a hot wallet on his mobile device.
Cheong highlighted that the attack possibly occurred via a phishing email from one of DeFiance Capital’s portfolio entities. By opening the file, the attacker would have spread malware on his device that would have granted him total access to the private key of the founder’s digital hot wallet.
The expert also said that the crime was a targeted social engineering attack in a tweet. He received a phishing email that seemed to have got sent with content about the general industry.
A hot wallet always gets a direct connection to the Internet, which makes it vulnerable to this kind of activity. While they are ideal for carrying out transactions with funds and daily crypto trading, they do not care about holding large sums of such currencies. On the other hand, cold wallets and physical devices not linked to the Internet offer more safety regarding the house of digital currencies.
A Considerable Loss of NFT
Blockchain security firm PeckShield also brought a complete report about the incident. A series of investigations highlighted that the hacker managed to extract 59 NFTs from the venture’s wallet. The removed NFTs were five CloneX, 17 Azuki’s, 33 Second Selfs, two Hedgies, and two Tsubasa, all famous NFT collections.
The attacker then sold many stolen items on marketplaces such as OpenSea. According to The Block, the criminal has also migrated other tokens such as Wrapped Ether, Lido DAO token, LooksRare, and DYDX to a wallet under his power.
The total value of the loss got valued at around USD 1.7 million since it is the sum in the perpetrator’s wallet; 585 ETH got valued at that number going back to Cheong’s wallet. However, this sum could increase even more since the hacker appears to continue the migration of funds. Etherscan, a tracking service for the Ethereum blockchain, has already tagged the cryptocurrency address in question as “Arthur0x Wallet Hacker.”
Amid the outstanding popularity of the NFT field, hacking attacks aiming at NFT users have also increased. Cheong is not the first high-profile investor to become a victim of such an attack.
In January, a famous NFT collector revealed that his wallet got attacked, and just over $2 million worth of Bored Apes and Mutant Apes NFTs got extracted to unknown accounts.
By: Jenson Nuñez
