Over $27,000 worth of NFTs stolen via malware wrapped in Google Ads, victim loses life savings

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NFT nearly $30,000 (roughly Rs. 24 lakh) was reportedly stolen by an NFT influencer, who calls himself NFT God’ on Twitter. The influencer claimed that his wallet full of digital collectibles was drained in a hack attack. Valuable NFTs worth nearly $30,000 (roughly Rs. 24 lakh) were drained from his wallet, after he engaged with a sponsored ad on Google’s search engine, replicating an open-source video streaming software that the victim was looking for in the first place .

Along with the more expensive Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT, a group of other NFTs worth ETH 19 amounted to over Rs. 24 lakhs were reported stolen, according to Etherscan.

NFT God’s verified Twitter account, which has over 91,000 followers, mostly from the crypto community, posted about the incident warning others not to get scammed.

My Twitter has been hacked. I open my monkey’s OpenSea bookmark and there it is. A completely different wallet listed as owner. I knew at that moment it was all over. Everything. All my cryptocurrencies and NFTs have been taken from me, the influencer tweeted.

Last night my entire digital livelihood was hacked.

Every account connected to me both personally and professionally has been hacked and used to hurt others.

Least important, I lost a life-changing amount of my net worth

NFT God (@NFT_GOD) January 15, 2023

The hack happened on Jan. 15, according to the influencer.

Last week, cybersecurity firm Cyble issued a warning against malware that seeks out phishing victims via Google ads. The name of this malware has been dubbed Rhadamanthys Stealer by the company.

Rhadamanthys thief spreads using Google Ads which redirects the user to phishing websites that mimic popular software like Zoom, AnyDesk etc. It can also spread through spam emails containing an attachment for delivering the malicious payload. The engineers behind this campaign have also created a highly convincing phishing webpage that impersonates legitimate websites to trick users into downloading the stealer malware. Linking to these phishing websites is spread through Google ads, Cyble said in her report. Google has yet to release a statement regarding the NFT influencer’s claims.

While sharing details of her ordeal with her Twitter followers, the victim claimed that she had made a mistake when setting up her Ledger account on her new computer, which may have given her access to her social networking accounts and digital wallets all the time. ‘hacker.

I go to setup my ledger with it and make a critical mistake. I set it as hot wallet instead of cold wallet, he noted.

Hot wallets are connected to the internet making them more susceptible to hacking attempts, while cold wallets are those that store cryptographic tokens offline, but their drawback is that they could be lost or damaged by the holders.

According to a report from CoinTelegraph, most of the stolen ETH was sent to a decentralized exchange called FixedFloat via multiple wallets.

This isn’t the first instance where Google ads have been used in conjunction with phishing malware. In October 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also warned cryptocurrency investors against malicious actors targeting them via Google.

Google displays phishing sites when users search for CMC. This affects users who add smart contract addresses to MetaMask using these phishing sites. We are trying to contact Google about this, and in the meantime notifying users of this through social channels. pic.twitter.com/3q4860Jl4H

CZ :large_orange_diamond: Binance (@cz_binance) October 27, 2022

In September, an analysis of the Google Play Store revealed that two apps Mister Phone Cleaner and Kylhavy Mobile Security were infected with malware called SharkBot which was capable of stealing cookies from accounts and bypassing authentication methods that require user input, such as fingerprints.

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