Key Takeaways
- Nearly 110 Wrapped Ethereum worth around $174,000 was stolen.
- The theft followed the auction of an exclusive, single-edition NFT this week on Coinbase NFT, which raised 119.2 WETH, solely for charitable purposes.
The Ethereum Wallet linked to Bill Murray, the popular actor and comedian was drained of nearly 110 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) , worth about $174,000 at the time of the attack.
The theft happened following the auction of an exclusive, single-edition NFT this week on Coinbase NFT, which raised 119.2 WETH, solely for charitable purposes. The hacker reportedly also attempted to take non-fungible tokens(NFTs) from the actor’s personal collection.
The attacker tried to steal 800 NFTs from the Bill Murray collection that was sitting in the wallet, but Project Venkman was successful in moving those NFT’s up to a safehouse.
According to Gavin Gillas from Murray’s wallet security team from Project Venkman, he first observed an unauthorized transaction removing 108.03 WETH, worth around $171,500, from the wallet last night, followed by another suspicious transaction for 1.73 WETH, worth around $2,750.Gillis further added that those were the only transactions in which WETH was stolen.
As per Murray’s team’s findings, the hacker sent the stolen funds to a wallet address tied to the crypto exchange Binance and Unionchain.ai.
Reportedly Project Venkman was able to shield Murray’s NFTs by moving his high-priced JPEGs – including a Damien Hirst NFT, two CryptoPunks, a Pudgy Penguin, a Cool Cat, and numerous Flower Girls – to a pair of safehouse wallets.
The funds from the NFT auction were meant to be donated to a non-profit called Chive Charities. A Coinbase NFT marketplace had revealed the runner-up in the NFT auction donated 120 ether to the charity to make up for the stolen funds.
NFT thefts are now increasingly becoming common in the Web3 space. According to blockchain research firm Elliptic, NFT thieves stole more than $100 million worth of non-fungible tokens in the year to July.
Between the first and second quarters of 2022, the value of NFTs stolen through social-media scams went from $3.2 million to $15.4 million—a staggering 386% jump.
With NFT crimes on a surge, regulators, marketplaces, project developers, NFT traders, and influencers must work hard to ensure the safe and secure development of this technology.
