Jamie McNeill
The actor Bill Murray raised $185k for charity as part of an NFT auction, but shortly afterwards his wallet was compromised and $185k was stolen.
Bill Murray raised 119.2 ETH for charity
At an NFT charity auction, Bill Murray sold an NFT entitled “Beer with Bill Murray”, which entitled the buyer to have beer with the celebrity as part of an initiative to raise money for charity.
NFTs from the collection promise to include never-before seen stories and anecdotes from the celebrity, which has drawn a lot of attention from die-hard fans.
Hacker accesses Murray’s personal wallet
Only hours after the charity had been completed, the hacker was able to access Murray’s personal wallet.
It appears that the hack happened at around 7am, during which time Murray would most likely have been asleep.
The attacker successfully managed to steal all of the proceeds from the charity NFT auction ($185k) and made off with the proceeds.
Following that, the hacker attempted to steal some of Murray’s NFTs, of which he has many. It is suspected that the hacker was able to gain access to the wallet thanks to his seed phrase being compromised.
Murray had a security team for his NFTs
Fortunately, he had a security team help to safeguard his digital assets, and when they noticed the problem arise, they stepped in to resolve it and to save as many NFTs as they possibly could.
The security team at Project Venkman stepped in and moved over 800 of his NFTs, which included “a Damien Hirst NFT, two CryptoPunks, a Pudgy Penguin, a Cool Cat and numerous Flower Girls“.
He is extremely lucky that the exploit was noticed, and that it was noticed so quickly – if the hacker had been more adept, he would have stood only little chance of saving his assets.
People need to learn how to custody assets safely
One of the main lessons from the bear market, for many people, is the importance of ensuring that one’s assets are custodied in a safe and secure way.
Many retail investors in the past have not appreciated the importance of self-custody. In 2011, the Mt. Gox meltdown was a sharp warning that trusting one’s Bitcoin with centralised counterparties could prove to be hugely problematic.
More recently, investors were also punished if they decided to surrender their private keys to others – Celsius was the best example of this in 2022, and people lost billions of dollars.
Even retail users who do take custody of their own assets and seed phrase can fall prey to scams and hacks.
Users who are not careful enough to shield their keys from others (it is always best to use hardware wallets) or who may have inadvertently infected their computer with keylogging malware, or who have mistakenly clicked phishing links and engaged with erroneous contracts may lose all their funds.
Fortunately, in this case, the victim isn’t someone struggling for funds. Nevertheless, it ought to be seen as a reminder that this sort of thing can happen to anyone who isn’t careful enough.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jamie McNeill.
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