Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, Stolen Via Instagram

On Monday, Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs lost a total amount worth $2.57 million over a phishing scam. A hacker got into the NFT’s brand account on Instagram and posted a link with a promise to give free land in the Otherside metaverse to people who already owned Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.

However, the people who clicked the link and connected their crypto wallets were left without their NFTs.

Bored Ape’s creators say that the hacker walked away with six Mutant Ape Yacht Club, four Bored Ape Yacht Club, and three Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs. On top of that, one user also lost his Clone X NFT worth $54,000.

The largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has flagged the NFTs for “suspicious activity,” but there are no measures in place to stop the attacker from selling the NFTs. 

He already offloaded some of them on another NFT marketplace, LooksRare, and sold the four stolen Bored Ape Yacht Club for 540 ETH ($1.6 million).

Yuga Labs created the Bored Ape Yacht Club original NFT collection in April. Each NFT from the collection is worth a minimum of 145 ETH ($430,000). The Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection was launched last August and goes for 39 ETH ($117,000) today.

The Bored Ape Kennel Club collection has NFTs that go for a minimum of 14 ETH ($42,000). This collection is a set of dogs thought of as owned by the Bored Apes.

One of the Yuga Labs’ founders, Gargamel, pointed out that they had two-factor authentication (2FA) activated on their Instagram at the time of the hack. He assured their followers that they followed the platform’s best practices. The case is still under investigation as of writing time.