Even though thefts of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, don’t happen very often, they are still strange because they involve high risk and big losses. The most well-known target so far is Steven Galanis, who is the CEO of the celebrity video site Cameo. Galanis said over the weekend that his Apple ID had been hacked, which led to him losing a lot of NFTs. This includes a Bored Ape Yacht Club ape that he bought for close to $320,000 in January.
After a bot said that the NFT was being sold again, Galanis tweeted about the theft of Ape #9012 on Saturday. Galanis bought the ape for 100 Ethereum, which was about $319,500 at the time, and the person accused of stealing it sold it to a new owner for 77 Ethereum, which is about $130,000 today. Galanis also said that he lost a number of other cryptocurrency assets, such as 9,000 ApeCoin tokens, which are worth about $66,000 right now, and Otherside tokens, which are next to the BAYC. OpenSea has now frozen the ape in question, making it impossible for its new owner, MonroeSaintJames, to sell it in the marketplace.
WTF?!? This got hacked https://t.co/rkJhYM8BlH
— Steven Galanis (@Mr312) August 7, 2022
The way the hacking works is not clear from Galanis’s tweets. Some people on Twitter thought that he might have kept a copy of his seed phrase, which is a security key that can be used to get into a cryptocurrency wallet, in a service that uses iCloud backups. This would have given the hacker access to his account after his account was taken over. The Verge sent Galanis a direct message on Twitter asking for confirmation, but he didn’t answer right away.
But a lot of other NFT owners have also been hacked, sometimes for very large amounts of money. Seth Green’s cryptocurrency wallet was broken into, and an ape was stolen. The ape was the star of one of Green’s planned TV shows. Green paid $300,000 to get the ape back in the end. Even worse, a hacker took over the official BAYC Instagram account and tricked NFT owners into giving him over $1 million in tokens. Even though these transactions are easy to track down in theory, it is hard to undo them without first making a deal with the new owner, as Green did. Galanis hasn’t done this yet, but he might not have any other choice if he wants the ape back.
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