$800K NFTs, Crypto From Rare Bears Holders Hacked

A phishing attack caused members of the NFT community to lose approximately $800,000 of their assets.
Rare Bears project head’s discord account has been compromised and banned other team members.
Moving forward, Rare Bears team promised to take security matters seriously.

Holders of the newly-launched NFT project, Rare Bears, have lost more than $800,000 worth of NFTs and other cryptocurrencies in a phishing attack.

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On Wednesday, the unknown perpetrator obtained illegal access to the project head’s Discord account. He then posed as an official moderator under the name “Zhodan”. Hence, the act allows them to post a phishing link that was designed to rob people’s funds.

Rare Bears is an NFT of a group of 2,400 unique cartoon bears, fully hand-drawn and created by a New Zealand-based digital artist called Enox. The NFT debuted through a public mint just last week.

A twitter post from Rare Bears confirmed the attack. They also warned people not to click any links or connect their wallets as they’re working on the situation.

The culprit posted a message saying there was an additional 1,000 Rare Bear NFT mint at a price of 0.1 ETH ($280), containing a link to a phishing site. What is more, a victim, asking for reimbursement, under the name “steldes” shared a screenshot on Twitter of what seems to be the fraudulent announcement by the Discord admin impersonator.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield said the website hosted a mischievous smart contract that allows full control over the victim’s wallets. Through this, the hacker gained access to 179 NFTs and other crypto owned by everyone who engaged in the mint.

Starting at 7:34 PM UTC on Wednesday, the hacker moved the assets to their Ethereum address. At that instant, nearly all of the NFTs were sold one after the other. Specifically, these amounted to 286 ETH, around $800,000 at the time of writing. 213 ETH of this amount was sent through a non-custodial privacy solution – Tornado Cash. The remaining 72.3 ETH was scattered through three wallets which were most likely owned by the hacker.

In a recent tweet by Rare Bears, they confirmed that Pandez will be added to their team as Discord manager. Pandez audited the hacking incident and explained in detail how their discord has been compromised. Moreover, he mentioned the measures they took to handle the situation.