A malicious link falsely promising a free NFT was reportedly responsible for losses to consumers totaling $691,000 after hackers broke into Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X (previously Twitter) account.
According to reports, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin had his X (previously Twitter) account hacked. ZachXBT, a well-known blockchain investigator, claims that victims who fell for the scam lost a total of $691,000 after visiting a rogue link.
Dmitry Buterin, Vitalik’s father, posted on X on September 9 to reveal that his son’s account had been hacked:
“Apparently Vitalik’s account has been hacked, so disregard this message. He is now attempting to repair the gateway.”
The original message to which he referred has been removed. It was written by Buterin and shared on his account, proclaiming joy at “Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum.”
The hacker spread a fraudulent link purporting to go to a free commemorative nonfungible token (NFT), then lured victims into connecting their wallets so they could take all of their money.
As a result, Bok Khoo, an Ethereum developer also known as Bokky Poobah on X, claims he has lost money on his CryptoPunk NFT collection as a result of this occurrence.
As of press time, the current minimum purchase price for a CryptoPunk NFT is 46.99 Ether, or around $76,837.
ZachXBT has been quite transparent about the hacker’s operations to his 438,200 followers. He just revealed that CryptoPunk #3983, valued around $253,543, is the most expensive NFT stolen to date.
An X user who goes by the name Satoshi 767 said that Buterin’s account security procedures were inadequate.
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