Advertisement
Hong Kong buyers of NFTs are ripe targets for hackers, scammers amid growing popularity of crypto projects, dearth of regulation
- Hong Kong NFT project Monkey Kingdom lost US$1.3 million in a hack, while the developer behind Baby Wukong NFTs disappeared online
- The past year saw an international boom in NFTs, the total value of which exceeded US$40 billion, but criminal activity has also increased in this sector
Reading Time:6 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
2
About an hour before midnight on December 21, Hong Kong finance professional Jackson Leung turned on his personal computer and clicked on a link to obtain a non-fungible token (NFT) from the popular local project Monkey Kingdom.
Advertisement
It did not take long, however, for Leung to realise that something was amiss. Instead of getting a newly minted NFT, the link sent money from his cryptocurrency wallet to an unfamiliar account bearing a name that starts with “HuiY”.
“I was in an absolute hurry to try to click the link, which was posted by an administrator at Monkey Kingdom’s group chat on [instant messaging service] Discord at the time,” Leung said. “I had every reason to believe that it was legit. But soon after I clicked it, I knew that I was scammed.”
It turned out to be a phishing link that defrauded Leung and many others who wanted to take part in the Monkey Kingdom project, founded by Hong Kong entrepreneurs and promoted by celebrities such as Singaporean singer JJ Lin and American disc jockey Steve Aoki. By the time the NFT project’s administrators detected the security breach and shut down all activities, buyers had lost more than 7,000 solana, a popular cryptocurrency, to the scam. That amounted to nearly US$1.3 million based on the latest transacted prices.
05:15
SCMP Explains: What are NFTs?
SCMP Explains: What are NFTs?
Phishing is a common form of online fraud to steal user data, including login credentials and credit card numbers. It occurs when an attacker, masquerading as a trusted entity, dupes a victim into revealing sensitive information using fraudulent links or messages. It is now being employed to breach access to users’ cryptocurrency wallets.
Advertisement
The Monkey Kingdom case marked the latest in a series of scams to hit the NFT space in recent months, as demand for these digital assets continues to expand.
Advertisement