Murray’s digital wallet was emptied of 119.2 Ethereum, or around $185,000, by the hacker just hours after he raised money in an auction-style bidding war.
Murray’s donation to Chives Charities, a non-profit that assists veteran and first responder families, was taken on Thursday evening, according to CoinDesk, which broke the story first.
The Lost in Translation star was auctioning off a beer with Bill Murray NFT, which sparked a bidding war. Brant Boersma, a Coinbase user, outbid six other bidders to win a meeting with Murray, which would be painted on canvas and made into a digital copy.
Despite having a wallet security team from a company called Project Venkman, the funds were taken. Murray’s team told CoinDesk that the attacker, who has yet to be identified, moved the stolen assets to a wallet address linked to the crypto exchange Binance and Unionchain.ai. It filed a police report and was collaborating with blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis to track down the perpetrator.
Murray’s Misfortune Gets Worse
The hacker also targeted Murray’s personal collection, which was worth thousands more and was better protected by the actor’s security. The collectibles, which included a Damien Hirst and two Crypto Punks, were safeguarded by shifting them to safehouse wallets, according to CoinDesk.
In the same wallet, the hacker attempted to take 800 NFTs from the Bill Murray 1000 collection. These tokens, the most expensive of which cost roughly $17,000, were also safeguarded by transferring them to a safehouse wallet.
Meanwhile, the auction’s runner-up, Coinbase user Mishap72, stepped in to compensate for what was stolen. According to Coindesk, they paid 120 Eth (about $187,500) to Chive Charities.
Crypto Hackers are Persistingly Exploiting All vulnerabilities
Last week, the FBI issued a warning that cybercriminals were increasingly abusing flaws in the smart contracts that govern decentralized finance (DeFi) networks.
“Cyber criminals strive to exploit investor interest in cryptocurrencies, as well as the intricacy of cross-chain functionality and open source nature of DeFi platforms,” the FBI noted in a statement issued only days before the Murray robbery.
Cybercriminals stole $1.3 billion in cryptocurrencies between January and March 2022, according to Chainalysis. Almost 97% of DeFi platforms were stolen, up from 72% in 2021 and 30% in 2020, respectively.
Kyber Networks, a DeFi platform, announced last week that it had been hacked for $265,000 after a threat actor exploited a weakness in its interface. ShadowFi, a privacy coin, said it lost roughly $300,000 in a similar incident last week.
In June, Buzzfeed reported how Seth Green was forced to hand over a $260,000 ransom to a hacker that stole his Bored Ape Ethereum NFT, which was to be the main character in one of Green’s upcoming shows.
Crypto heists are proving increasingly lucrative, with nearly $2 billion in digital currency stolen in the first half of this year, according to a study by Chainalysis.
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