OpenSea Targeted in a Phishing Attack, Users Lose $1.7 Million Worth of NFTs

Key takeaways:

• OpenSea users lost $1.7 million worth of NFTs in Saturday’s phishing attack
• In total, 188 NFTs were stolen from 17 users
• Attacks on OpenSea could see its competitors increase their market share at the expense of the leading NFT marketplace

On Saturday, the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace suffered an attack, which saw users lose roughly $1.7 million worth of digital collectibles. According to Devin Finzer, co-founder and CEO of OpenSea, the marketplace appears to have been a victim of “a phishing attack originating outside of OpenSea’s website.”

Users lost NFTs collectively worth $1.7 million, some of the stolen items have already been recovered

The attacker took the advantage of Friday’s scheduled smart contract upgrade that prompted OpenSea users to migrate their NFTs to a new smart contract, which was ironically released in order to patch a previously identified exploit. In all the commotion, several users feel for phishing scams.

The latest attack comes less than a month after an attack exploiting OpenSea’s vulnerability saw a malicious actor made away with more than 330 ETH, worth roughly $780,000 at the time.

According to Finzer’s early reports, 32 users have been impacted by the most recent phishing scam. Some of the stolen NFTs have already been recovered since the attack took place.

As far as we can tell, this is a phishing attack. We don’t believe it’s connected to the OpenSea website. It appears 32 users thus far have signed a malicious payload from an attacker, and some of their NFTs were stolen.

— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) February 20, 2022

Earlier today, OpenSea tweeted that 17 users were impacted rather than 32 individuals.

According to Dune Analytics’ user Jeliat, the attacker made away with NFTs from several popular digital collections, including Bored Apes and Doodles. In total, 188 digital collectibles were stolen.

OpenSea had its best month on record in January, with the trading volume reaching a record-breaking $5 billion, and the number of registered users surpassing 1 million for the first time ever. 

However, the recent attacks levied against OpenSea might leave users looking for alternative NFT trading platforms. Competitors such as Rarible and NFT marketplaces launched by crypto giants Binance and FTX could see their market share increase in the aftermath of the most recent OpenSea attacks.