OpenSea as a non-fungible token (NFT) trading platform has reportedly been attacked by hackers, resulting in hundreds of NFT users being lost. Hundreds of NFTs from OpenSea users were stolen in a phishing attack that occurred on February 19, 2022 local time. Phishing itself is an attempt to use fake web pages to trick potential victims. The web page for phishing will look similar to the official website and use a similar domain name. According to documents compiled by blockchain security service PeckShield, 254 tokens were stolen during the attack, including tokens from Decentraland and the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Most of the attacks occurred between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET (Eastern Time) targeting a total of 32 users. One who runs the blog "Web3 is Going Great", Molly White, estimates the stolen tokens are worth more than $1.7 million. The OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer also said the same thing through his Twitter account. He debunked rumors that the hack had caused a loss of 200 million US dollars. According to him, the attacker had 1.7 million US dollars Ethereum in his wallet from selling some of the stolen NFTs.
“We suspect the attack was not linked to the OpenSea site. It appears that 32 users have so far signed malicious payloads from attackers, and some of their NFTs were stolen," said Finzer.
It said the attack appeared to be dormant at this point, nor had it seen malicious activity from the attacker's account in two hours. According to Finzer, some NFTs have been returned. The attack appears to have exploited flexibility in the Wyvern Protocol, the open source standard underlying most NFT smart contracts, including those built on OpenSea. A user on Twitter named Neso described that the attack took place after the target signed a partial contract or a check that was left blank. With that signature, the attacker could transfer ownership of the NFT without payment. The explanation from Neso was also shared by Finzer on Twitter.
NFT itself is a digital token that acts like a certificate of authenticity representing ownership. NFT assets can range from illustrations to collectibles. OpenSea has become one of the most popular NFT marketplace companies. OpenSea provides an easy interface for users from registering, browsing, to bidding for tokens without interacting directly with the blockchain. At the time of the attack, OpenSea was in the process of updating its contract system. However, OpenSea denied that the attack stemmed from a new contract.
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