The apes finally have something to get excited about.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club, the extremely popular non-fungible token collection built on the ethereum blockchain, was hit by hackers who made off with millions of dollars worth of the simian images.
'We Alerted Our Community'
Yuga Labs, the company behind the NFT project said the monkey business began when the BAYC’s official Instagram account was hacked.
A rough estimate of the losses due to the scam came to four Bored Apes, 6 Mutant Apes, and three Bored Ape Kennel Club, along with assorted other NFTs with a total value pegged at about $3 million.
"The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the Bored Ape Yacht Club website," Yuga Labs said, "where a safe TransferFrom attack asked users to connect their MetaMask to the scammer's wallet in order to participate in a fake Airdrop."
Minutes later, Yuga Labs said, "we alerted our community, removed all links to Instagram from our platform and attempted to recover the hacked Instagram account."
"Two-factor authentication was enabled and the security practices surrounding the IG account were tight," Yuga Labs said. "Yuga Labs and Instagram are currently investigating how the hacker was able to gain access to the account. We're still investigating."
'No Mint Going on Today'
The Bored Ape Yacht Club also made an appeal on its Twitter page.
"If you were affected by the hack or have information that might be helpful, reach out to ighack@yugalabs.io," the group said. "You need to contact us first - anybody contacting you first is not us. We will NOT reach out to anyone over email first, and we will NEVER ask for your seed phrase."
On Monday, BAYC tweeted "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."
Earlier this month, Bored Ape Yacht Club’s official Discord channel was hacked.
The unknown hackers' phishing scam was successful as they made off with one user's Mutant Ape NFT, according to security firm Peckshield.
BAYC said a webhook in the collection's Discord channel was "briefly compromised," and warned users to not be baited by fraudulent stealth mints or airdrops.
Also in early April, a scammer stole over half-a-million dollars worth of Bored Ape NFTs.
A bored ape holder going by the name "s27" lost bubble gum ape and matching mutants worth $567,000 after swapping their NFTs at an exchange named “Swap.Kiwi”, which allows for direct NFT swaps between collectors, at reduced transaction fees.
Yuga Labs makes money by selling the NFTs and also getting a small percentage when the NFT is resold on the blockchain.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is by far the company's most popular collection. There are only about 10,000 apes in the collection and the minimum cost to purchase one is 93 ether, or about $224,000.
Celebrities like Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon and Eminem all have their own special apes.
