Fractured Fractal
The Fractal launch takes a hit by Ryisan C.
Quick Points
Fractal launch suffered an attack that resulted in $150K being stolen.
The attack made use of a blink-and-you-miss-it tactic.
Hot on the heels of anticipation comes a big heaping helping of disappointment. Justin Kan’s NFT platform Fractal suffered a $150K loss in user funds due to a hacker attack.
It is well known that the crypto and web3 space is still a bit volatile and can be dangerous at times. A rather pointed example of this volatility can be seen in what happened with the launch of Fractal yesterday. Fractal suffered a major security breach when a scammer hacked the announcement bot for Fractal’s discord. This hacker then in turn used the bot to send out a fake link to the more than 100K users of the discord which in turn created FOMO for another rare drop from the platform and urged those users to hurry and purchase or risk losing out.
In a rather blink-and-you-miss-it tactic, the hacker changed the name of the link in the message from “fractal” into “fractai” changing the “l” into an “i” and those that were not careful enough to notice that change ended up becoming the victims of this ploy. Some members of twitter reported on it and Justin Kan personally warned users as well.
These types of attacks were common in the ICO years via social media links like Discord or Telegram and can be attack vectors on projects in general. NFT buyers should always be wary of what goes on in the space before the actual launch of an NFT as hackers are constantly coming up with new ways to defraud those that are simply looking into buying into a project.
It would appear the hack took place early in the process of setting up their discord and the hacker made away with about $150K. At the time of this writing, Kan has already pledged to return money to anyone that was a victim of this attack.
Fractal is a platform that makes more use of the NFT that you have in your wallet and provides more liquidity and ability for those unable to ape into projects from mint to be able to join in. The launch of the platform was planned for this week and updates on that launch are now forthcoming. The attack, though unfortunate, does not seem to have hindered the platform or plans for the future of Fractal due to Mr. Kan’s swift response and promise of fund replacement to his community.