On-chain sleuth uncovers hackers behind majority of NFT Discord hacks

TL;DR Breakdown

An on-chain sleuth may have found the actors behind the majority of NFT Discord hacks.
About 18 hacking incidents in the Ethereum ecosystem resulted in a total loss of $636 million.
Thefts through NFT Discord hacks are becoming prevalent in the market.

The rise of NFTs has brought with it a new wave of hacks and scams, with millions of dollars worth of digital art and other assets stolen in recent months. April may go down in crypto history as the month with the most hacks in both NFT markets, owing to multiple breaches that have been reported.

NFT Discord hackers tracked

An on-chain sleuth (@Zachxbt) managed to pinpoint about four Ethereum Name Service (ENS) addresses linked to multiple NFT Discord hacks, which all traced down to a particular ETH address or hacking group (name unknown), per se. The ETH address had a balance of 1355 ETH, an equivalent of $3.9 million, and Zachxbt suspects it could be their main ETH address.

1/ With all of the NFT Discord hacks over the past few months I thought it would be beneficial to map out one of the groups doing them
Currently $3.9m (1355 ETH) sits in their main wallets which are highlighted below
This number doesn’t include what has already been cashed out pic.twitter.com/4kECBTuNCq
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) April 25, 2022

Zachxbt claimed that this hacking group could be responsible for multiple NFT Discord hacks, given that their main ETH addresses were somehow connected to multiple such attacks in recent times. Also, they employed a similar strategy of posting links to phishing sites in the announcement channel of hacked Discords.

They proceed to move the stolen funds from “each Discord hack through multiple wallets into the main wallet.” Zachxbt further noted that the hacking group could also be responsible for “The 333 Club” Discord channel hacked last weekend, which resulted in the loss of about $317k worth of NFTs (or 110 ETH).

4/ This is just one of the groups. There are a few different ones competing against each other. They “hack” the Discord through social engineering and phishing sites.
All of these people originate from forum websites.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this group alone has made 8 figs.
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) April 25, 2022

Hackers made $1.3 billion in Q1

According to the AtlasVPN team, blockchain hackers earned approximately $1.3 billion in 78 hack events in Q1 2022. Moreover, during the quarter, hacks on Ethereum and Solana’s ecosystems resulted in over $1 billion losses.

In the first quarter of 2022, there were 18 hacking incidents in the Ethereum ecosystem, resulting in a total loss of $636 million. Late March saw the Axie Infinity sidechain Ronin Network fall victim to a security breach, with attackers stealing 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC worth $610 million.

In 2022 Q1, the Solana ecosystem suffered five hacking incidents and $397 million in losses. Wormhole, a communication link between Solana and other DeFi networks, was the second most severe hack of the quarter, costing approximately $334 million in damages.

The most attacked assets were NFTs, with 20 hacks and around $49 million in damages. Scammers are creating NFT projects in order to rag pull scams.

Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/sleuth-uncovers-nft-discord-hacks/