Famous NFT influencer “NFT God” aka Alex faces a life-changing phishing attack in the form of a Google Ads malware, violating his entire digital livelihood.
NFT God tweeted “Last night my entire digital livelihood was violated. Every account connected to me both personally and professionally was hacked and used to hurt others. Less importantly, I lost a life changing amount of my net worth.”
NFT God was trying to download OBS, an open-source video streaming program, via Google’s search engine. However, he mistakenly clicked on the scammy-sponsored advertisement rather than the official website, and that one click changed his life forever.
A follower informed Alex a few hours later that both his Twitter accounts had been hacked. Within a short period of time, Alex regained control of his Twitter accounts and removed the hackers’ phishing tweets.
Later, he discovered that his crypto wallet was compromised. NFT God’s Bored Ape NFT’s owner address had also been changed on OpenSea. The NFT influencer noted at that moment he realized all of his NFTs and cryptocurrency had been taken from him.
The following day, hackers targeted his 16,000 subscribers with phishing emails from his Substack.
The phishing attack was possible because NFT God set up Ledger as a hot wallet instead of a cold wallet on his new computer. Alex stated he entered his seed phrase in a way that no longer kept it cold. “I knew I made a critical mistake,” he noted.
NFT God put off buying another Ledger cold wallet because he hadn’t bought any additional NFTs in months and didn’t have any plans to do so anytime soon.
Because of this huge mistake, when the malware was installed on his computer, the hackers had access to NFT God’s funds. On-chain data reveals that Alex’s wallet was robbed of at least 19 ETH, valued at $27,000, a MAYC NFT, whose current floor price is 16 ETH, and numerous other NFTs.
Phishing attacks are one of the most typical ways bad players hit the crypto market. Last year, Binance CEO CZ warned users that Google promotes crypto phishing and scamming sites when they search crypto data aggregator CoinMarketCap (CMC) on the search engine.
Also Read: 7 Common Crypto Scams on Twitter
