The X handle of Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin was hacked, and the hacker defrauded his unsuspecting followers’ funds to the tune of $700,000 after sharing malicious links with them.
On Saturday, the hacker who obtained access to Vitalik Buterin’s account announced the release of a fresh set of commemorative NFTs from software vendor Consensys, in a now-deleted post.
The link pushed users to link their wallets and mint the NFTs, and it was accessible to Vitalik Buterin’s 4.9 million X followers. Unknown to the victims, the link was maliciously created to lure people into connecting their wallets so that it could take all of their money.
Dmitry Buterin, Vitalik Buterin’s father, disclosed that his son’s account had been compromised in an X post on Sunday:“
Disregard this post, apparently, Vitalik has been hacked. He is working on restoring access.”
ZachXBT, a well-known blockchain researcher, claims that once the victims clicked on the malicious link, they jointly lost more than $691,000 due to the incident.
Bok Khoo, an Ethereum developer known as Bokky Poobah on X, alleges to have experienced losses in his collection of CryptoPunk NFTs. The floor price for a CryptoPunk NFT is currently 46.99 ETH, or around $76,000.
Later on Sunday, ZachXBT revealed that CryptoPunk #3983, which is valued at 153.62 ETH or over $250,000, is the most expensive NFT to have been stolen to date.
Despite Vitalik Buterin’s lack of response to the situation, speculators maintain that his account must have been compromised since he may not have taken adequate security precautions.
