Fraudsters have come up with a new scheme to scam NFT tokens. How not to fall into their trap?
If you’re an active Twitter user and your account has suddenly been mentioned in a post about giving away free NFTs, it’s probably a scammer. In this case, they are talking about an “opportunity to get” unique tokens from a series called Azuki. Such an NFT collection does exist, but its creators did not announce the token distribution the day before. That said, Twitter users continue to be mentioned in a thread where a malicious link from the scammers is being distributed. When clicking on it and after connecting a cryptocurrency wallet, the scammer’s victim simply loses all NFT from their address. Let’s talk about the situation in more detail.
Traditionally, we’ll start with an explanation. Azuki is one of the most popular and expensive collections of NFT tokens. As of today, it is in fifth place among other collections by minimum price. The figure stands at 22.5 ETH or the equivalent of $71,000.
The most popular and expensive NFT collections
Notably, over the past 24 hours, the minimum value of the token has slipped by 13.9 percent – the biggest collapse among the top five NFT collections.
How NFT tokens are stolen
First of all, fraudsters steal confirmed Twitter accounts with the appropriate blue tick, including journalists and other media workers, and then change the profile text and avatar. This is done to convince the victim that the account really belongs to one of the creators of the popular Azuki project, who has also supposedly gone through the identity verification process. He himself had received a lot of publicity in the cryptocurrency community the day before, even though the project was developed by Chiru Labs studio.
An example of a tweet from a fake newsletter
The scammers then send a link on Twitter promising a “secret airdrop” – i.e. a free giveaway – of Beanz. These are unique tokens that were indeed given away for free, but only to owners of the original Azuki collection. In order to receive these very Beanz they ask you to connect your crypto wallet via a link. That’s the end of the scammer’s trap – the victim simply loses all the NFT from their wallet.
By the way, these Beanz are not free now: according to the NFT Price Floor platform, the minimum price of a token from the collection is 5.11 ETH or about $16,500.
The dynamics of the minimum price of Beanz
Read also: Who among the world's celebrities owns expensive NFT tokens: a detailed list.
In at least two cases, the aforementioned Twitter accounts of journalists were hacked via a phishing attack via an email newsletter. As a reminder, phishing is a type of fraud in which an attacker obtains confidential information from a victim through deception or social engineering techniques, but not through hacking. In other words, in this case, the victim provides the necessary data or performs the necessary actions to lose assets.
One journalist told Decrypt that his stolen account sent out at least 6,000 tweets, nearly half of them mentioning the accounts of potential victims of the fraudulent scheme to draw their attention to the malicious link.
This fraudulent scheme is very similar in nature to the recent ApeCoin (APE) coin giveaway incident, which is associated with the popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). Recall that in March, fraudsters managed to steal over a million dollars worth of NFT through a fake APE giveaway. The principle is the same - victims lost their tokens after connecting the wallet via a malicious link.
ApeCoin
Curiously, some victims of the ApeCoin scam claimed that they did not connect their wallet to the site specified by the scammers, but lost NFT anyway. With the help of stolen verified Twitter accounts, the scammers were able to convince many users of the veracity of the APE giveaway. Again: tokens were indeed given away, but only to owners of copies of the BAYC collection.
After a while, even the community's Discord server was attacked. This time it was also offered to take part in the "giveaway", but supposedly for new unique tokens. Even despite the fact that there are a lot of experienced cryptocurrency users among BAYC owners, they found their victims here.
NFT collection of BAYC
We believe that the activation of fraudsters in the NFT token industry essentially just proves once again the potential and value of this digital asset category. Even so, circumventing such schemes is relatively easy. Ideally, you should not go to any obscure sites and do not sign transactions from addresses that hold valuable tokens. Even if the temptation to explore a "new project" is great, it is better to do it with individual wallets with a small supply of coins that you can afford to lose in case of an emergency. And addresses with high-value NFTs are best touched only when it really comes to selling the token.
Keep in mind that in such schemes, scammers try to make the potential victim rush to commit a series of actions without thinking them through. Therefore, in this case, it is better to study the offer properly, visit the pages of the project and its developers and only then make any decision.
You can learn more about this and other popular scammer tricks in our Millionaire Cryptochat. There we will discuss other important developments related to the blockchain and decentralization industry.
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