TRM Labs: NFT community lost $22M due to Discord hacks

Experts from the Web3 security agency TRM Labs believe that the increase in discord accounts being compromised has led to an increase in unauthorized minting of collectible tokens by hackers.

TRM Labs specializes in digital asset compliance and risk management. His report says that in most cases, hackers use compromised accounts of administrators of Discord servers. The number of cyberattacks on NFT collections has steadily increased in 2022, costing the community more than $22 million in May alone.

TRM Labs notes that over the past two months, over 100 reports of hacked Discord channels have been received through the agency’s own reporting platform Chainabuse. TRM Labs analyst Monika Laird says that in June 2022, NFT minting scams through stolen Discord accounts increased by 55% compared to the previous month.

Laird elaborates that the attacks happen on a weekly basis and often target ERC-721 tokens. According to the analyst, the same groups attack exchanges, wallets and launder cryptocurrencies through mixers. For example, the same hacker that attacked the yacht club Bored Ape Bubbleworld, Parallel, Lacoste, Tasties, Anata and others is allegedly behind the hacks and compromised Discord accounts. Laird said that since May, 150 accounts of administrators of large channels of NFT projects have been compromised.

A TRM Labs specialist said that usually hackers take control of the server administrator account and send out links to promotional gifts and NFT “exclusive drops”, pushing people to go to malicious sites.

Analysts at the system security agency SonicWall recently posted a report stating that stealth mining incidents have increased amid a decline in ransomware attacks.