Cybercriminals stole €100 million worth of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the first half and a bit of 2022, according to new research.
A report by Elliptic found that the majority of NFTs were stolen in July, while the average theft earned NFT investors and buyers €300,000 per incident. The number could even be higher, the company added, as many incidents are not even reported and thus do not affect the average figures.
More often than not, the thieves tricked people into handing over their NFTs, rather than trying to find a vulnerability or loophole in the system, and the thefts are usually done through social media. In fact, nearly a quarter (23%) of all NFT thefts this year originated from social media.
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But Elliptic also seems to imply that many of the NFT acquisitions that contributed to the meteoric rise of the niche market came from shady sources. Nearly $330 million in funding in the NFT market came from cryptocurrency mixers, such as Tornado Cash, he said.
These services hide the origins of the tokens, making them ideal for people looking to launder stolen crypto through ransomware, data breaches, crypto hijackers, and other means.
"NFT-based services are increasingly threatened by sanctioned entities and state-sponsored exploits," Elliptic said.
Earlier this month, Tornado Cash was frozen by the US government and its developer, Alexey Pertsev, arrested. The US government alleged that Lazarus Group, a known state-sponsored threat actor from North Korea, used the service to launder funds stolen from various cybercriminal activities.
The Lazarus Group is linked to the theft of over €600 million worth of various cryptocurrencies from the Ronin Bridge, which was one of the largest crypto heists in history.
NFTs are non-divisible digital tokens, such as images, music or text. One of the most popular NFT collections is the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), with individual tokens reaching a price of millions of dollars.
Via: Reuters (opens in a new tab)