Attackers Take Advantage of An OpenSea Loophole To Steal And Resell Rare NFTs.

One attacker spent around $133,000 for seven NFTs before swiftly selling them for $934,000 in ether.

Due to a glitch in the OpenSea NFT marketplace, attackers have been able to steal rare NFTs from owners for considerably below market value and resale them for large profits.

According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, at least three attackers exploited a weakness in the marketplace, stealing more than $1 million as of Monday. One of the suspected opportunists purchased a Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT for $10,600 in ether before selling it for $34,800 in ether hours later.

Elliptic said in a report:

“The exploit appears to originate from the ability to re-list an NFT at a new price, without canceling the previous listing. Those previous listings are now being used to purchase NFTs at prices specified at some point in the past — which is often well below current market prices.”

One attacker, known online as “jpegdegenlove,” purchased around $133,000 for seven NFTs before swiftly selling them on the network for $934,000 in ether.

Suspicious behavior has increased in the last day, however the problem has been there for weeks and was first reported in a tweet on January 1. On Monday morning, the marketplace was used eight times in an approximately eight-hour period.

According to blockchain analytics provider Nansen, a wallet address associated with multiple purchases profited $878,288 worth of ether from the exploit.

Jenna Pilgrim, CEO of blockchain media licensing startup Streambed, said:

“The fact that a user could buy at previous prices and flip NFTs without any form of verification points to the centralization issue in NFTs as they stand right now,”

According to Elliptic, “jpegdegenlove” later reimbursed two of their victims, handing them a total of $75,000 worth of ether.

According to Charles Guillemet, CTO of hardware wallet firm Ledger, it is not secure for NFT holders to have their assets published on OpenSea at the moment. “It’s very difficult to use this platform securely right now,” he stated on Monday in a Twitter discussion. “The only thing we can do is to mitigate the risk.”

OpenSea has yet to publicly address the issue and has not responded to Blockworks’ request for comment.

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Patrick

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