Amid making headlines due to his involvement in Madonna’s recently launched NSFW NFT collection, prominent digital artist Beeple has now had his Twitter account hacked.
⚠️ Beeple's Twitter account has been compromised (ATO) to post a phishing website to steal funds.
0x7b69c4f2ACF77300025E49DbDbB65B068b2Fda7D
0xF305F6073CFa24f05FF15CA5b387DD91f871b983 pic.twitter.com/0MPNwOPlEu— harry.eth (whg.eth) (@sniko_) May 22, 2022
The hack occurred yesterday, and included a phishing link to a fake raffle for NFTs from the Beeple’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton, which, if clicked on, would steal users’ crypto.
All-in-all, the phishers in question reportedly took over $70,000 worth of ETH from the first link, and around $365,000 worth of ETH and blue-chip NFTs from the second, bringing the total value of goods stolen to around $440,000.
After five hours of the links being active, Beeple (a.k.a Mike Winkelmann) was eventually able to regain control over his account, which he relayed to his followers via an explicit tweet.
ugh we’ll that was fun way to wake up.
Twitter was hacked but we have control now. Huge thanks to @garyvee ‘a team for quick help!!!!
— beeple (@beeple) May 22, 2022
Although unusual in the sense that it was done through a prominent figure’s Twitter account, phishing scams remain an ever-prevalent problem within the loosely regulated NFT space – alongside rug pulls and other ill-intended acts. It’s also not Beeple first run-in with malignant community ongoings, as in November an admin of his Discord server was hacked, which led to 38 ETH being extracted by scammers via a fake NFT drop link.
