On Saturday, May 4, hackers hacked the Discord servers of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) project and posted phishing links on their communication channels. Digital assets worth 200 ETH (~$359,000) were stolen from NFT holders.

“Today our Discord servers suffered a brief abuse. The team quickly found the problem and fixed it. Around 200 ETH worth of NFTs appear to be affected. We continue the research, ”the developers wrote.

An analyst nicknamed OKHotShot was the first to draw attention to the event. BAYC community manager noted that Boris Wagner’s account had been hacked, allowing a phishing attack.

Wagner is the founder of the Spoiled Banana Association (SBS), a BAYC-owned group that created a fantasy football league. The attackers also posted malicious links on his behalf on SBS communication channels.

This isn’t the first time hackers have stolen BAYC owners’ assets via phishing links on official communication channels. In April, the attackers gained access to the project’s Instagram account and stole 765.3 ETH and 91 NFT from users.

During the event, BAYC co-founder Gordon Goner said that Discord is not suitable for the crypto community because it is insecure.

“Discord is not suitable for Web 3.0 communities. We need a better platform that puts security first,” he wrote.

Some commentators disagreed with him. The creator of the OpenAvatar NFT project under the pseudonym Cory.eth noted that the BAYC team did not take measures to protect the Discord server. He suggested posting all announcements on the blockchain and having the bot resend them to traditional communication channels.

Recall that in May 2022, unknown people hacked the Twitter account of artist Mike Winkelman, known by the pseudonym Beeple, to publish phishing links. Their mining was worth about $438,000 in assets.