BAYC Discord Compromised, NFTs Totaling 200 ETH Stolen

The Discord account belonging to BAYC community manager Boris Vagner was compromised on Saturday, paving the way for the theft

article-image

Bored Ape Yacht Club | Source: Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • A malicious actor has made off with $359,000 worth of Bored Ape NFTs following a compromise to BAYC’s discord server
  • The hack marks the third time in two months that BAYC’s NFTs have been compromised, raising questions over the project’s security

A malicious actor has made off with 200 ether ($359,000) worth of Bored Ape NFTs after the Discord server belonging to the project was compromised on Saturday.

Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) parent company, Yuga Labs, confirmed the amount in a tweet roughly 11 hours following the attack. The attacker was able to breach the security of the Discord account belonging to BAYC’s project manager Boris Vagner, according to on-chain analyst and Twitter user @NFTherder who first sounded the alarm.

“Our Discord servers were briefly exploited today,” Yuga Labs tweeted via its BAYC Twitter handle. “The team caught and addressed it quickly. About 200 ETH worth of NFTs appear to have been impacted. We are still investigating.”

Following the successful breach, the actor was then able to post a phishing scam pretending to be Vagner that duped Bored Ape collectors into clicking a malicious link and sent their NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to the attacker’s address, NFTherder said.

Vagner was promoted to social and community manager in February, according to a tweet in which he praised the founders of Bored Apes and Yuga Labs.

Questions have sprung up on social media as to how the Discord account was compromised, questioning the project’s security. Despite proper security measures by way of two-factor authentication, attackers, in this instance, may have circumvented security by obtaining a Discord ID token from a targeted victim.

One explanation for the method behind the attack was that Vagner’s Discord ID token — used to log in multiple times locally without verifying one’s identity — was also compromised. This could have allowed the actor to gain access to Vagner’s account.

The theft marks the third time BAYC has been hacked, including an instance on April 1 when a Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT was stolen via a phishing link on Discord. Almost four weeks later, on April 25, BAYC’s Discord and Instagram accounts were also hacked when a link to a copycat website duped users into giving up NFTs worth millions of dollars.

Hundreds of users have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration at the repeated attacks and alleged lack of security.

Loading Tweet..

“They [BAYC] should consider investing a full-time security manager,” NFTherder tweeted in response to one user’s comment on BAYC’s security. “Surprised they haven’t already though.”


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

Research Report Templates.jpg

Research

In this report, each analyst on the Blockworks Research team lays out their highest conviction thesis for 2025.

article-image

Bitwise argued in its 2025 outlook report that bitcoin ETFs will attract more flows in 2025 than they did in 2024

article-image

Odds of an interest rate cut later this month are all but out the window

article-image

Exploring the drama surrounding a shiny new stablecoin

article-image

Asset Reality’s Aidan Larkin explains how the US government offloads bitcoin

article-image

We’re talking about FTX here, so we could have anticipated that things wouldn’t go as smoothly as planned

article-image

Half the surveyed advisers still consider regulatory uncertainty the top hurdle for future crypto investments