NFT scammers lure buyers with ‘gasless sales’ on OpenSea, multiple ‘monkeys’ stolen: Harpie

OpenSea, the largest NFT market there is, constantly finds itself under threat from notorious cyber actors. A new type of scam threatens visitors to OpenSea, which offers “gas-free sales” on the platform and possibly redirects victims to phishing sites. Built on blockchain technology, NFTs are digital collectibles that have financial value and could also be used in metaverses. Web3 scammers are notorious for invading the NFT industry to make big profits from a single act of theft.

Harpie, the anti-theft platform, has issued an alert on this ongoing scam to warn OpenSea’s visitor group, looking for NFTs, as well as buyers and sellers.

OpenSea has a feature for performing gasless sales, where NFT sellers can rid their buyers of paying platform fees, by doing it themselves.

As part of the ongoing scam, hackers trick people into signing an unreadable message. Gasless NFTs are likely to attract signature demand from early buyers.

Users can also set up private auctions with custom prices with those illegible signatures required to approve transactions without gas.

“Phishing websites will ask victims to sign a harmless-looking ‘login signature’ to gain access to their site. But this login signature is actually a request to privately sell your NFT for 0 ETH to the hacker’s address,” Harpie wrote in a Twitter post.

The platform also claimed that in recent times several “Apes” NFTs, potentially from the Bored Apes Yacht Club collection, have been stolen from OpenSea.

The exact number of NFTs stolen or users affected remains unknown.

So far, OpenSea has not addressed Harpie’s concerns.

However, this is not the first time that OpenSea has faced a hacking threat.

In February, at least 32 OpenSea users lost their assets worth $1.7 million (around Rs 12.5 crore) to a phishing attack. The company, at the time, claimed that the attack happened from outside the website, where the attackers lured users into malicious agreements.

In August, OpenSea decided to involve law enforcement officials in theft cases of all sizes, rather than just cases with escalating disputes.

The change was intended to ensure that users are protected from the risks of mistakenly purchasing stolen digital collectibles.