Yuga Labs’ Instagram account, the creators of the popular series of NFT ape profile pictures collectively called the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), was attacked by hackers on Monday.
According to Yuga Labs, a hacker took over the official Instagram account and lured members with fraudulent messages claiming they would receive free tokens if they connected their MetaMask wallets to a site linked through the post.
“This morning, the official BAYC Instagram account was hacked. The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the BAYC website with a fake Airdrop, where users were prompted to sign a ‘safeTransferFrom’ transaction,” BAYC said in a tweet on Monday. “This transferred their assets to the scammer’s wallet.”
While BAYC immediately alerted its community, removed the fraudulent links, and regained control of the accounts, the scammer still took off with approximately $3 million worth of NFTs through the hacked Instagram account.
According to reports, Four Bored Apes, six Mutant Apes, and three Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs were stolen by the hackers, along with other items from upcoming collections.
“You need to contact us first – anybody contacting you first is not us, BAYC warned,” the developers said. “We will not reach out to anyone over email first, and we will NEVER ask for your seed phrase.”
Yuga Labs is still currently investigating the hack and alerted its community to remain vigilant and only seek information from its official web pages.
“We will also NEVER announce mints on the BAYC or Otherside Instagram accounts first, ever,” the BAYC added. “Only obtain information from our official Twitter accounts: @BoredApeYC, @yugalabs, and @OthersideMeta. These will be crossposted on the #announcement channel of BAYC Discord.”