J. Michael Skiba, international financial and cybercrime expert, joins Cheddar News to discuss the latest phishing attack on NFT marketplace OpenSea.

Between Bells

Cybercrime Expert Talks OpenSea NFT Theft

Welcome back everyone, Attackers over the weekend stole hundreds of N. F. T. S from N. F. T marketplace open. See the panic began after a spreadsheet compiled by the Blockchain security service peck shield counted 254 tokens stolen over the duration of the cyber attack. With the bulk of the attacks taking Place between five pm and eight pm, an estimated value of stolen tokens are stand at more than $1.7 million for more on this. We're joined by J Michael, Skiba International, financial and cybercrime expert. Michael, welcome to the show, huge players here in the N. F. T. Game saw their token stolen, including the central land and board a ship yacht club. We also know the popularity of open sea. The first question I think that so many of us are thinking is how could this happen? Yeah. You know, and and you know, it all boils down to that social engineering aspect. So this, you know, the reports are still coming in as far as what actually happened, but I think what we're seeing is that really was that social engineering, It was a bunch of pop ups that were coming up to certain users targeted users. No, because we think it happened between five and 8 p.m. Uh, you know, I think it was a highly targeted phishing attack. You know, they knew those users were going to be on at that moment, but it happened through the pop ups, you know, those pop ups would come up and, and you know, maybe the users didn't read them thoroughly and they were led down that string until eventually the hackers penetrated into their system and into their N. F. T. Wallet thus stealing their funds. Somali White for our viewers that don't know she runs the blog Web three is going great. She estimated like we mentioned the value of the stolen tokens at more than $1.7 million. What happens now that these N. F. T. S. Have been stolen? Yeah and this is what's interesting, this is what's what's very intriguing about the whole N. F. T. World is that it's it's unlike in a regular Bitcoin. Bitcoin is like physical assets, dollar for dollar. N. F. T. S. Are kind of nebulous. You know we see them being used in videos and audios. So what we're gonna see here is you know what is the real value? You know what what was the value of what was stolen? And what we're hoping here is that this is kind of an awareness and awakening because puppies are fairly new. Open C. Has only been around since 2017. Um So so what we hope is that this is going to kind of bring some awareness to it, maybe you know these these high growth companies like open seas which grew from you know 95 million in 2017 to 32 billion this year. So when you have that growth they're focused on managing that asset but they need to keep up with the security protocols as well. And a lot of those again come down to the basics of the social engineering was all just someone, you know, clicking on something, they shouldn't have. I mentioned the popularity of open sea a moment ago, we're seeing a tweet from them right now. They've become such a valuable company when it came to the N. F. T. Boom, what does this indicate for open seas future? And this is what this is what we're gonna have to wait and see, you know, because we see this in so many other platforms, you know, again, N. F. T. S are new. You know, there there's thousands of different forms of Bitcoin out there. What you're gonna see is two things you're gonna see, you know, one, you know, the public publicity is out there for open seas so some people might just google it, that might not have before looking for assets, looking for investment. But secondly, the scammers are gonna be drawn to this market, you know, a little bit more because they realize that this is a vulnerable market, you know, because it is quote unquote new, we find it, you know, it's kind of like candy to a child, they're gonna be naturally drawn towards this. Um you know, and again it's like when you buy a new car, they say, well don't buy the first model year, it comes out because they're working out the kinks, this is what happened I think with open seas, you know, so we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully they can put some some stronger security protocols in place to protect their users. N. F. T. S. Are relatively new, Michael. How vulnerable are these marketplaces to attacks? Like the one we just saw over the weekend is the security where it needs to be. Yeah, and that's where, you know, again when you have these these you know, high growth companies, um you know, they they simply don't have the manpower, you know, to to put that effort into it. Again when you're growing, you know, from millions to billions in a matter of years, just managing those assets is huge. So what you have to do is have the security that goes along with that, you know? And again, we saw that originally when crypto was first introduced, you know, the scammers, the criminals were drawn to it because it's really difficult to be tracked. And we're seeing some momentum now with law enforcement, uh you know, some agencies, but but it's it's just so difficult from a jurisdictional perspective to figure out what was stolen, how it was stolen to actually trace it. It's a really heavy lift. Um so so this is what we're going to have to see is how these N. F. T. S. You know, how we can work out maybe an investigative protocol, we can fall back on some of the things we use in Bitcoin and crypto, but this is a unique asset. So it's going to be interesting to see how this pans out is an attack similar to this just inevitable moving forward. Unfortunately, I hate to say yes, because, you know what we're going to see is, you know, we're gonna have a new platform come out maybe next year, year after, you know, bigger platform and that people are going to be drawn to. And and quite frankly, the same thing's gonna happen here. You're gonna see the scammers drawn to that, looking for those vulnerabilities, you know, and and Bitcoin is like, it's a new era, everyone's excited about, everyone's hearing about it. Um you know, people that might not normally even think about investing in this in this form of currency will do that. Um So it's just drawing a lot of attention all the way around. Um and and of course it's drawing money in, you know, money for uh you know, the criminal element to to focus on J Michael Skiba, doctor of dr fraud, international financial and cybercrime expert like you mentioned this isn't the last of it. We hope you come back to discuss