Pepe creator and NFT world adversary Matt Furie was… well, put it this way. When a North Korean hacking group snuck onto his project and hijacked his mission, Gov. Furie had previously collaborated and co-founded project Chainsaw to release multiple NFT collections. After their smart contracts were hacked, the project lost more than $400,000.
The hacker was able to pose as a legitimate candidate and score an IT position at Favrr. This move is directly in step with their long-established strategy of stealing. Favrr’s choice to bring this person on as their CTO further exposes an alarming oversight in the security of the project itself.
Favrr incurred a $680,000 loss from the hack, carried out by this same small cadre of North Koreans. In fact, the group’s attacks on Favrr and one other competing firm caused a $1 million total loss.
ZachXBT, a well-known on-chain investigator, recently issued a stark warning of the increasing activity from North Korean hackers. This caution was issued notably after the Lazarus Group carried out the largest-ever cryptocurrency theft. His initial suspicions from investigating the hack of Furie’s NFT led him to conclude that North Koreans were the actual hackers after all.
In fact, the hacker’s strategy was to mint as many NFTs as possible until the price floor dropped to near zero. Further complicating matters, one of Furie’s insiders swapped the mint contract for Replicandy, one of Furie’s NFT collections, overnight.
Favrr has been the only firm to have issued a public commitment in response to the incident. Matt Furie followed up with three other collections, five days after the hack, claiming to have raised about $310,000.
Chainsaw issued a short public warning regarding the hack before removing that message from their networks. The recent breach underscores the skyrocketing increase in crypto-related crime. It exposes the lack of security practices that these firms have put in place.
