Instagram Account of the Bored Ape Yacht Club Was Hijacked by Hackers

Earlier this week, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) ’s official Instagram account was hijacked by hackers. After gaining access to the account, the attackers proceeded to share a malicious link that redirected users to a fake website where their NFTs were stolen.

 

Confirming the incident on Monday, BAYC took to Twitter to warn users. However, the warning did little to stop the attackers from fleecing unsuspecting victims.

 

“There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything.”

 

Recall that in March, the creator of the BAYC c collection, Yuga Labs, released a teaser trailer for a new project called Otherside. Although the teaser did not explicitly state what the project was about, the consensus is that Otherside is an upcoming metaverse project scheduled to drop on April 30.

 

The hackers capitalized on the upcoming project to trick users. Those who clicked on the fake link were taken to a site where they could claim free NFT land for the upcoming Otherside metaverse. Users were urged to connect their Ethereum wallets even if they didn’t own a Bored Ape to claim the free airdrop. Those who did had their NFTs stolen.

 

A total of 91 NFTs were stolen during the attack. The combined value of the stolen items was around $2.8 million at the time of the attack. And according to blockchain sleuth zachxbt, the hackers went away with some high-profile NFTs, including four Bored Apes, seven Mutant Apes, and three Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs.

 

“This morning our team was alerted that the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s official Instagram account was hacked. The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the Bored Ape Yacht Club website, where a safeTransferFrom attack asked users to connect their MetaMask to the scammer’s wallet in order to participate in a fake airdrop,” said Yuga Labs in an official statement.

 

In the meantime, the company said it was working to “establish contact with affected users.”