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Kevin Rose gets scammed out of millions worth of NFTs
Moonbird NFT founder Kevin Rose is the latest victim of a phishing hack leading to over $2 million in losses. On Wednesday, the PROOF collective founder tweeted that his personal wallet was hacked. The total number of NFTs that Kevin Rose lost is around 40, including 25 Chromie Squiggles and other rare collectibles. Read on to learn more about the incident below.
How did Kevin Rose lose $2 million worth of NFTs?
It is said that Kevin Rose was “phished to sign a malicious signature that allowed the hacker to transfer a large number of high-value tokens.” – according to fellow PROOF VP Arran Schlosberg. Rose signed an off-chain signature that created a record for all OpenSea-approved assets at once. In the tweet announcing the hack, Kevin Rose warns his followers not to buy any Chromie Squiggles, an iconic project from Art Blocks founder Snowfro.
Around 40 major NFTs are lost as a result of this hack. Some of these include projects like Cool Cats, OnChainMonkeys, Chromie Squiggles, Autoglyphs, QQL Mint Pass, Admit One Pass and more. Arran also states that the hacker conned Kevin Rose in a classic case of social engineering. To clarify, Kevin Rose was lulled into a false sense of security and signed malicious transactions that were then accepted by OpenSea’s marketplace contract.
He also adds that PROOF collective digital assets are safe and unaffected by the hack. This is because PROOF NFTs require multiple approvals for access. The team states that they are actively investigating the issue with the OpenSea and Ledger anti-fraud teams. Furthermore, @cxcoda (PROOF engineer) submitted code to block access to the malicious website on Metamask. The shutdown will be effective globally within 24 hours.
What is happening with NFT hack?
Kevin Rose is the latest in a series of phishing scams targeting major NFT/web3 builders. On January 7, Nike RTFKT COO Nikhil Gopalani lost around $137K in NFTs due to phishing attacks. NFT Twitter has exploded with support and even outrage against the prominent scams in the industry. Toppdegen @Degentraland has called this the “saddest” they have seen to date.
Crypto detective @ZachXBT states that the scammer also stole 75 ETH from another victim around the same time. The stolen funds are moved from there to FixedFloat, where the fraudster exchanges their ETH for Bitcoin before depositing into a bitcoin mixer. There are also reports that this is the same scammer who also stole a CryptoPunk #6982 earlier this week.
Additionally, crypto detective @0xQuit says SeaPort approved the malicious signature off-chain. The SeaPort protocol allows developers to build powerful tools, and provides more flexibility for traders to buy and sell NFTs. This protocol powers OpenSea, but can be used anywhere. Exit states “At its core, seaport allows you to create a listing consisting of an asset or a bundle of assets (offer items), together with assets required to fulfill it (consideration).” Scammers in the port can sometimes try to reverse this loophole to drain wallets that are still connected to the site. Exit warns that users must always be wary of accounts they use to interact with websites. More details about this type of wallet drain can be found in his twitter thread.
