You have to stay on your toes whenever you are online these days because there are a world of scammers and hackers out there looking for a chance to break through your defenses and take you for all you have got. These cams can look legitimate too, but the consequences can be very real even if what the scam is promising you is not. To illustrate this point, details are emerging about a massive hack that took place in March this year, that ended up costing Sky Mavis, the Axie Infinity developer $620 million. Let’s check it out.
Back in March 2022, North Korean hackers were involved in a scam that emptied the coffers of the popular and growing game, Axie Infinity. Come April, the FBI had released details of the hacker groups behind the plot, identifying them as Lazarus and APT38, who run hacking operations and cryptocurrency scams for the North Korean government. A new report releases more information about how they did it, and it is something unusual that we’ve seen before.
Back in May, we brought you news of a new type of scam targeting victims through fake job offers. At the time those job offers were aimed at the artist community and were supposedly employing for NFT art projects. It looks like something similar was happening in March with Sky Mavis employees contacted on LinkedIn by a fake company offering them fake job offers with very generous salaries.
A senior engineer had his head turned by the generous salary on offer and went through several rounds of interviews. At one point during the recruitment process he downloaded a PDF file that supposedly contained details about the position he was applying for, but instead offered the hackers a way into the Ethereum-linked sidechain that supports the crypto-transaction in Axie Infinity. The result is history with $620 million going walkabout, the engineer losing his job, and Sky Mavis still trying to reimburse players who lost money in the attack.
It is shocking to think that a scam preying on the hopes and dreams of ordinary people could end up walking away with so much money but there you have it. You really need to be careful if you are going to protect yourself and those around you when online. Any time, anybody wants you to download anything, you need to run through the checklist on our anti-phishing scam protection infographic.
