According to data gathered from popular NFT analyst OKHotShot, several high-profile NFT Discord channels were hacked in May 2022.
By breaching the security of these Discord channels, malicious users were able to impersonate channel moderators and use phishing links to steal thousands of dollars worth of NFTs and cryptocurrency.
In May, 70 discords got exploited including big projects like @RTFKT and @coolcatsnft. Even OpenSea's official discord was breached!
26 of the 70 discords were compromised through the @mee6bot. MEE6 has yet to release a detailed report in response to the 26 breached servers .. pic.twitter.com/boBrptFg5i
— okHOTSHOT (@NFTherder) May 30, 2022
Some notable NFT Discord channels that were hacked include the official OpenSea channel, as well as those for high-profile NFT projects such as Cool Cats, Blockworks, and RTFKT.
Although social engineering was used to pull off many of these breaches, many were accomplished by exploiting vulnerabilities in Discord bots like MEE6 and Ticket Tool.
Additional data gathered by OKHotShot mentions that over 140 Discord channels have been hacked in 2022 so far, including several NFT Discord channels.
Just last weekend, the Bored Ape Yacht Club channel was breached on June 4. By impersonating Yuga Labs community manager Boris Vagner, the infiltrator stole 145 ETH (about $270,000) worth of NFTs through a phishing link.
🚨BAYC & OtherSide discords got compromised‼️
Seems because Community Manager @BorisVagner got his account breached, which let the scammers execute their phishing attack. Over 145E in was stolen
Proper permissions could prevent this pic.twitter.com/lCl2DfZQ0W
— okHOTSHOT (@NFTherder) June 4, 2022
As a brand-new and rapidly developing market, NFTs are high risk and high reward. But despite the recent market slump causing many to believe cryptocurrency is entering a bear market, the risk of getting rugged, liquidated, or outright robbed hasn’t decreased.
Even if the infrastructure of blockchains and smart contracts are able to keep users’ assets safe — and that’s a big if — there’s still a massive risk when using centralized platforms like Discord and Telegram to communicate with other community members.
Projects that hope to survive tumultuous market conditions in order to benefit from the next bull run will need to restore faith in their users and investors. Needless to say, using Discord bots unsafely and responding poorly to numerous high-profile hacks is the wrong way to accomplish this.
