Infamous Hacker Steals $1 Million Worth of Crypto Including Bored Ape NFT
An notorious scammer referred to as Monkey Drainer has drained roughly 700 ETH ($1 million) value of crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) over the previous 24 hours.
The outstanding on-chain sleuth referred to as ZachXBT first broke the information, revealing that the scammer used phishing to empty person funds. He additionally managed to trace and spotlight the exercise of the hacker.
“Over the previous 24 hrs ~700 ETH ($1m) has been stolen by the phishing scammer referred to as Monkey Drainer. They lately surpassed 7300 transactions from their drainer pockets after being round for just a few months,” the pseudonymous researcher mentioned.
The 2 greatest victims, 0x02a and 0x626, cumulatively misplaced $370,000 after signing transactions on phishing websites run by the hacker, in line with ZachXBT.
Sufferer 0x626 has misplaced probably the most. They held over $6.2 million value of crypto of their pockets on the time however misplaced $220,000. “Fortunately, they rejected the opposite transactions,” the researcher mentioned.
The second greatest sufferer, 0x02a, reportedly misplaced one Bored Ape Yacht Membership (BAYC), one CloneX, $36,000 in USDC stablecoin, and 12 different NFTs value in whole, round $150,000.
“These victims are simply two of many who’ve had their funds stolen by Monkey. The whole quantity stolen simply surpasses $3.5m, with that quantity quickly rising by every day,” ZachXBT mentioned, sharing two foremost wallets that ostensibly belong to the hacker.
In phishing scams, scammers usually share hyperlinks to web sites that impersonate real initiatives or corporations designed to trick victims into handing over personal credentials by providing an thrilling buy alternative.
Web3 safety community Chainabuse has particularly flagged 4 addresses regarding Monkey Drainer, together with the monkey-drainer.eth tackle.
Chainabuse detailed that victims seem “to have been phished by a pretend Aptos Airdrop Twitter account.” For perspective, Aptos NFTs have seen a surge in demand lately, producing round $5.5 million in gross sales since their launch on October 18.
NFT Scams Attain File Stage This Summer season
Together with a considerable improve within the quantity of DeFi hacks this summer season, there has additionally been an uptick within the variety of phishing makes an attempt concentrating on the NFT group members.
As reported, the favored NFT assortment Bored Ape Yacht Membership (BAYC) misplaced ETH 200 value of digital property in an exploit in early June. NFT influencer Zeneca and NFT registration platform PREMINT additionally fell sufferer to hacks in mid-July.
In mid-August, in a bid to struggle spammers, Solana pockets supplier Phantom introduced a brand new function that can burn spam NFTs despatched by scammers.
