Beeple Discord Compromised

It is an unfortunate but true reality that NFT-related organizations and personalities are constantly under attack from hackers and other malicious parties. Everything from social media accounts to wallets has been targeted over the years and this shows no signs of stopping, with the losses from NFT theft estimated at $100 million over the last year alone. 

One of the most recent attacks was targeted at Mike Winkelmann, the artist popularly known as “Beeple” who is famous for having one of the highest-selling NFTs of all time. Recently, Beeple revealed that his Discord server had been under attack.

Beeple Under Attack

The artist revealed on October 3, 2022, that his Discord server had been compromised through his official Twitter account. The Discord page, from all indications, requires proof of ownership of one of his pieces and this can only be done by connecting a digital wallet to it. Naturally, this would make his community members targets for attack. This is only further exacerbated by the fact that Beeple’s pieces often command a high price tag.

“it appears our discord URLs were hacked to point to a fraudulent discord.  DO NOT go into that discord and do not verify, it will drain your wallet!!  

once again massive thanks again to discord for being garbage,” he said. 

As Beeple explained, hackers had been trying to redirect his community members to a fake server that would steal their digital assets from their wallets. Sadly, this is not the first time that Beeple has been targeted by malicious hackers. Back in June 2022, his Twitter was also hacked, though it was eventually restored. 

In his announcement of the Discord issue, it is curious that he specifically called out Discord for being ‘garbage’. The platform is commonly used for community organization and engagement within blockchain and web3 spaces but has been called out for not being as supportive as it could be.

Bored Ape founder Gordon Goner has also criticised Discord and has suggested that a better platform is needed for such communities. Given how commonly Discord is used by NFT communities and the losses that have been incurred due to the attacks, one would hope that more resources would be put in place to protect users. 

And if these sorts of incidents continue, users might eventually migrate to another platform, though only time will tell whether it will be an existing platform or if a new one will spring up.

Keeping NFTs Safe

So far, there have not been any reports of NFTs being stolen from this latest Discord attack, though it is distressing nonetheless. It also shows the lengths that hackers will go to in order to steal assets from unsuspecting users. 

After all, if an official Discord URL can be used to redirect users to a malicious site, what can be trusted? Seeing as these attacks show no signs of stopping anytime soon, we can only hope that better security will be put in place by both Discord and others.