OPENSEA remains unsure of how many people were impacted in a $1.7million hacking scam, the company’s chief executive has admitted.
The trading platform for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – digital asserts purchased with cryptocurrencies using blockchain technology – was hit over the weekend.
Devin Finzer confirmed on Twitter that a complex phishing attack had seen scores of OpenSea NFTs stolen.
And while the scale of the scam was far smaller than the initially feared value of $200million, the trading platform’s boss said the company was still working out how many people were impacted.
So far 32 users have been confirmed to have been targeted but Finzer urged anyone who believed they were an affected user to get in contact.
Updating users of the platform yesterday, he said on Twitter: “We’re running an all hands on deck investigation.”
“As far as we can tell, this is a phishing attack,” he added.
“If you are an affected user, please DM @opensea_support so that we can thoroughly investigate — we’d love your help.”
Blockchain analysts PeckShield believe at least 254 tokens were stolen in the hack.
Some of the tokens have since been returned.
It is thought the hacker tricked victims of the complex scam into signing digital contacts giving consent for the trades in a phishing email.
The NFTs were transferred to the hacker’s own account.
They were then able to sell on the tokens for a total of $1.7million.
“We are not aware of any recent phishing emails that have been sent to users, but at this time we do not know which website was tricking users into maliciously signing messages,” Finzer said.
“We don’t believe it’s connected to the OpenSea website.
“It appears 32 users thus far have signed a malicious payload from an attacker, and some of their NFTs were stolen.
“The attack doesn’t appear to be active at this point.”
He warned users of the OpenSea platform to check they were always on an official opensea.io web domain when signing into their account.
Purchases made using blockchain technology are largely unregulated, leaving them more open to potential attacks.
NFTs have grown in popularity in recent months as increasing numbers of people realise the potential investment value in NFTs.
In 2021, an estimated $23billion worth of NFTs were sold, up from just $94.9million in 2020.
Continuing the surge, in January almost $15billion in total trading volume was completed.
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