Banksy’s website promotes fake NFT in apparent hack

Street artist Banksy’s website briefly directed users to an auction for a digital artwork that sold for over $ 300,000. The problem? It was not genuine.

A webpage added to Banksy’s website on Tuesday showed an image with an avatar resembling one of the many popular NFT collectibles known as CryptoPunks.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique cryptographic tokens designed to represent ownership of a rare digital item, such as art or sports memorabilia. Sales of these digital assets have reached record levels this year thanks to the growing interest in cryptocurrencies and collectibles.

You can think of an NFT as a digital property receipt. Token buyers do hold a Certificate of Authenticity to say they own the original item – but that doesn’t give them copyright, and the media can still be viewed for free by other web users.

Anyone who clicked on Banksy’s NFT webpage on Tuesday would be directed to a link for an auction of a collector’s item called the “Big Redistribution of Climate Change Disaster”. The page was added to Banksy’s site on Tuesday morning and removed later, fueling speculation the site may have been hacked.

The list, published on the OpenSea Marketplace, ended early with the sale of NFT for 100 ethereum tokens, worth around $ 336,000 at the time.

Banksy’s Pest Control agency confirmed that the NFT was not created by the pseudonymous graffiti artist, but did not say whether Banksy’s website was hacked.

“Artist Banksy has not created any NFT artwork,” Pest Control told CNBC in an emailed statement Tuesday. “No Banksy NFT auction is affiliated with the artist in any form.”

In a strange twist, all the money was then returned to the buyer, an anonymous man who goes by the pseudonym “Pranksy”.

“My ETH from #Banksy #NFT purchase just surrendered, ethical hacker proving a point?” Pranksy tweeted on Tuesday.

“Just to add a comment, to those who think this may have been some sort of stunt. I would never risk a future relationship with Banksy or any other artist by hiring someone to hack their website and then buying me. a #NFT, what an unusual day! “

The man previously told the BBC that he learned about NFT from an anonymous user of the social chat app Discord, and that he suspected that person had hacked Banksy’s site.

“It’s still unclear whether this episode was the work of a hacker, or perhaps a pre-planned piece of art by Banksy himself,” blockchain analytics provider Elliptic said on Tuesday in a blog post.

Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at internet security firm ESET, said NFTs were still in their “nascent stage,” meaning they are “guaranteed to attract” cybercriminals and crooks.

“Buying from verified locations is vital, but unfortunately this advice is wrong as soon as the genuine website is hacked,” Moore told CNBC. “Prospective buyers should remain largely skeptical of NFTs while they are in these early stages, as they can be easily exploited and always err on the side of caution.”

“Scammers are very good at manipulating people, and the makeup of NFTs lends itself even more to abuse due to the lack of a physical product or service,” added Moore.