Watch your Monkeys
Jay Chou is a 43 year old singer, songwriter, rapper, director, producer, actor, television personality, and strangely magician who has been releasing album since 2000, has performed for more than 10m during tours, and starred in the Green Hornet in 2011. As many Taiwanese recording and film stars seem to do, Chou collects artwork which he purchases using NFT’s (Non-fungible tokens), which protect the one of a kind artwork from being copied and sold as original.
Unfortunately it doesn’t protect art collectors from being ‘phished’ by sophisticated hackers who offer giveaway promotions on Instagram or other social media sites. Mr.Chou made the mistake of clicking on one such offer only to find that his personal NFT worth $550,000 and three other valuable NFT artworks had been removed from his account, with the likely culprit being software loaded into his system by clicking on the free offer. Mr. Chou first thought that the missing art was an April Fool’s joke but when the source of one piece of his art posted that they also had been hacked he realized it was no joke and the tokens were truly gone.
There are two questions here, first, why would one expect a free offer of anything? And second why would one collect what was stolen? (see below), but our is not to reason why, just to note how many hacks, scams, swindles, and flimflams (Thank you President Biden) take place every day relating to cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and the ones that make it into the press or even the technical press are likely just a subset of what actually occurs, as many would rather not see their names associated with such issues. For what has been touted as a secure way to buy and sell ‘things’, the definition of secure seems a bit flimsy.
Unfortunately it doesn’t protect art collectors from being ‘phished’ by sophisticated hackers who offer giveaway promotions on Instagram or other social media sites. Mr.Chou made the mistake of clicking on one such offer only to find that his personal NFT worth $550,000 and three other valuable NFT artworks had been removed from his account, with the likely culprit being software loaded into his system by clicking on the free offer. Mr. Chou first thought that the missing art was an April Fool’s joke but when the source of one piece of his art posted that they also had been hacked he realized it was no joke and the tokens were truly gone.
There are two questions here, first, why would one expect a free offer of anything? And second why would one collect what was stolen? (see below), but our is not to reason why, just to note how many hacks, scams, swindles, and flimflams (Thank you President Biden) take place every day relating to cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and the ones that make it into the press or even the technical press are likely just a subset of what actually occurs, as many would rather not see their names associated with such issues. For what has been touted as a secure way to buy and sell ‘things’, the definition of secure seems a bit flimsy.
Figure 5 Artwork from the "Mutant Ape Yacht Club" where the second hack was reported - Source:concu.com via Instagram
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