Malicious actors stole assets worth about $1.7million from 17 users of open sea NFTs marketplace by taking advantage of its upgrade process. 

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets representing real-world objects like music, art, videos, etc. They are frequently sold with cryptocurrency and are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptocurrencies. That is bought and sold online.

Open sea commenced a smart contract migration on February 18, which is supposed to last till February 25 as part of their efforts to address old and inactive listings on the Ethereum blockchain. 

Open sea had sent emails to its users, notifying them about the upgrade. The hackers used a copycat of the same email sent by open sea to the users, redirecting the victims to a look-alike webpage, swaying them to sign what looked like a legitimate transaction, thereby stealing the NFTs at a go.

 The company said that the exact source of the attack is unknown and that it’s still carrying out investigations.

The victims had signed the malicious order before open sea successfully completed the upgrade. Although the attack no longer seems to be active, open sea continues to monitor it. No activity has been seen in the attacker’s wallet in 36 hours.

Further development used by the cybercriminals is exploring the growth of the popularity of NFTs. They trick victims into downloading the BitRATA remote access trojan malware capable of stealing browser credentials, harvesting sensitive information, and mining cryptocurrency.

Checkpoint stated that users should always pay attention to where and when they sign transactions to avoid these attacks because signing is similar to giving someone permission to access their NFTs cryptos.