Hackers take advantage of OpenSea plans to upgrade the smart contract

Many hackers are eyeing the OpenSea platform-based users to trick through misleading email to trick them easily. 

OpenSea is a top-ranked NFts marketplace, which is known as a giant of the crypto NFTs industry. On 19 Feb, OpenSea announced that its new smart contract upgrade is live and users can migrate their NFTs to the new smart contract without any fees within some limited time. 

However the upgrade in the smart contract of the OpenSea platform was aimed to solve some internal issues and also to delist inactive ETH network-based NFTs, but this plan of OpneSea opened a small time frame for bad actors to trick and facilitate scams on the OpenSea NFTs traders. 

Within a few hours of the upgrade announcement by OpenSea, many reports came to light and noted the ongoing attack that targets the soon-to-be-delisted NFTs.

OPENSEA EXPLOITED Everyone tag @opensea to get them to pause their new contract while everyone figures out whats going on with the exploit! #NFT #NFTs #NFTTheft #NFTScam #NFTSecurity #NFTAlert

— gt_dog (@gt_dog84) February 20, 2022

Later investigation on this thing revealed that some hackers were tricking the OpenSea NFTs traders by using Phishing mails. Hackers sent mail to users and when users confirmed the mail link then hackers received the authorization of the NFTs ownership. 

Though unconfirmed, the @opensea hack is most likely phishing. Users authorize the "migration" as instructed in the phishing email and the authorization unfortunately allows the hacker to steal the valuable NFTs… pic.twitter.com/Fj5d9ImC2r

— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) February 20, 2022

OpenSea and experts advised all the NFTs traders of OpenSea to stop giving any kind of authorization to any mail and also any permission to shift the NFTs on new smart contracts. 

On 20 February, OpenSea officially confirmed that all such exploits are part of the websites and bad actors outside the OpenSea platform and suggested avoiding clicking such links which are outside of OpenSea’s official website. 

We are actively investigating rumors of an exploit associated with OpenSea related smart contracts. This appears to be a phishing attack originating outside of OpenSea's website. Do not click links outside of https://t.co/3qvMZjxmDB.

— OpenSea (@opensea) February 20, 2022

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