School kids stealing NFTs to buy Roblox skins, get people do their homework

New Delhi: High school kids are busy stealing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) worth millions of dollars via compromised Discord and Twitter accounts to buy laptops, smartphones, high-end shoes and Roblox skins.

These kids are also spending the money on gambling, gift cards, Uber Eats, designer clothes, cars (which they can’t drive yet) and even pay people to do their homework for them, according to a report.

NFT drainers like Inferno and Venom are being used to carry out phishing attacks involving compromised Discord servers and Twitter accounts, reports The Block.

Data by NFT analyst and security expert known as OKHotshot showed that at least 900 Discord servers have been compromised since December 2021 for carrying out phishing attacks.

Such attacks have impacted at least 32,000 victim wallets over the last nine months.

In total, attackers have stolen NFTs and tokens worth a combined $73 million, the report mentioned.

“About 95 per cent of them are kids below the age of 18 and they’re still in high school,” said a pseudonymous security researcher known as Plum, who works on the trust and safety team at NFT marketplace OpenSea.

They’ll purchase a laptop, some phones, shoes and spend vast amounts of money on Roblox.

“They all play Roblox for the most part. So they’ll buy the coolest gear for their Roblox avatar, video games, skins and things like that,” Plum was quoted as saying.

These internet-savvy kids first utilise Telegram and Discord to spot channels run by the developers of numerous different kinds of drainer.

They then contact the developer and purchase the drainer, which takes the form of a set of code that can be integrated into websites, while agreeing to give 20-30 per cent of the proceeds to the developer.

“Then they will use their own methods — one being the fake news site example described above — to compromise a Discord server or Twitter account and advertise a fake website containing the NFT drainer code to steal NFTs and anything they can get their hands on,” the report mentioned.