Incident Overview
The fake SkyVerse NFT project fraudulently withdrew roughly 150,000 $USD from the users.
SkyVerse is an NFT collection on the Ethereum chain that offers staking opportunities as well. The project's Twitter account and website were recreated and then 150,000 $USD worth of $ETH was withdrawn from the affected user's wallets. The scammer convinced over 250 NFT collectors that the project had started minting and was rapidly selling out.
The scammer used a fake "counter" on the website to make it seem like the NFTs were selling out in real-time
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
What the Attacker Needed to Succeed
Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to SkyVerse, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (April 2022).
- Verify all logic paths related to Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
- Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
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