đ´â ď¸Bill Murray’s Ethereum Wallet Hacked for $174K After NFT Charity Auctionđ´â ď¸
Most of the money paid for a Murray NFT was stolen, but someone else has already donated replacement funds for charity.
The Ethereum wallet tied to actor and comedian Bill Murrayâwhich is being used to sell official NFTs inspired by his lifeâwas attacked last night following the completion of a charity auction this week, Murrayâs partners at The Chive and Project Venkman tell Decrypt.
Ultimately, nearly 110 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) was stolen from the wallet, worth about $174,000 at the time of the attack. The funds were stolen from the wallet following the auction of an exclusive, single-edition NFT this week on Coinbase NFT, which raised 119.2 WETH, or about $185,000 at the time of sale. All funds were intended for charitable purposes.
Gavin Gillas of blockchain startup Project Venkman, which Murray co-owns, told Decrypt that he first noticed an unauthorized transaction removing 108.03 WETH (about $171,500) from the wallet last night, followed by another transaction for 1.73 WETH (about $2,750). Those were the only transactions in which WETH was stolen, Gillis confirmed.
The wallet also held the nearly 800 Ethereum NFTs from the Bill Murray 1,000 project that are set to be sold next week, along with other NFTs that Murray owns through his business partnersâincluding CryptoPunks, VeeFriends, and Damien Hirst artwork.
None of the NFTs were stolen, and all remaining Bill Murray 1,000 NFTsâalong with those from other projectsâwere moved into other wallets in the hours that followed.
Gillas and John Resig, CEO of comedy and entertainment website The Chive (which Murray backed), told Decrypt that they filed a police report following the attack, and quickly engaged the services of blockchain forensics and security firm, Chainalysis. They also communicated with Coinbase NFT regarding the theft.
âWe engaged Chainalysis within 10 minutes of learning of the attack last night,â Gillas told Decrypt, âTheyâll have a bigger report on that, and they're still investigating all of the threads.â
The Chainalysis investigation remains ongoing, but Gillas believes that the attackers gained unauthorized access through a wallet-draining exploit. Such attacks typically occur after the wallet holder inadvertently interacts with a link that is used to perpetrate scams.
In many cases, the wallet holder signs a transaction that they believe to be for a legitimate purposeâlike minting an NFT or receiving tokensâbut it actually provides broad access rights to the walletâs tokens, and can be used to steal those assets. A wave of similar scams erupted over the spring and summer using hijacked Twitter accounts, among other means.
The attacker might have had a different entry point in this case, however. Gillas said that a Project Venkman employee had his wallet drained yesterday, as well, which Gillas theorized could tie the exploit to a hijacked work computer.
The Bill Murray NFT auction, completed on Wednesday, was created to raise funds for the Chive Charities initiative. The money was earmarked to support the care of a three-year-old girl named Evelyn, who Resig said is contending with the effects of a rare CLDN5 gene mutation, along with intractable epilepsy.
âSome bad actors stole money out of Bill Murray's walletâmoney intended for a three-year-old with a life-threatening condition,â Resig told Decrypt.
While the ETH funds paid by auction winner Brant Boersma were stolen, someone has already stepped up to replace the donation. Resig said that the runner-up bidder, who goes by the pseudonym mishap72, donated 120 ETH to replace the funds intended for the childâs medical care. If the hacked funds are recovered, they will also be donated for Evelynâs care.
And in the hopes of turning a bad situation into an even more positive situation than before, Resig said, The Chive has launched a GoFundMe page to crowdfund additional donations to help Evelyn, with an initial goal set of $25,000.
âWhen you're faced with adversity, you can you can take [it] standing up or lying down,â Resig told Decrypt. âGiven the nature of this theft, we decided not to sweep this under the rug. We need to be as transparent as possible about what happened.â
https://decrypt.co/108882/bill-murray-ethereum-wallet-hacked-174k-nft-charity-auction
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