Billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban fell victim to a phishing attack resulting in the loss of over $860,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The attacker successfully accessed one of Cuban’s crypto wallets and managed to siphon off $555,000 in Lido Finance’s staked ether (stETH) and $175,000 in USD Coin (USDC) on the Ethereum network. Additionally, the hacker seized valuable stakes in various tokens, including Ethereum Name Service, Polygon, SuperRare, and others. Currently, the attacker is consolidating the stolen assets, media reports said.
The initial detection of the hack was made by a pseudonymous Twitter user known as WazzCrypto. Mark Cuban later disclosed to DL News that he had fallen victim to a phishing attack, admitting to downloading a counterfeit version of MetaMask. Initially, Cuban had stated, “Someone got me for 5 eth,” implying that he might not have realized the full extent of the breach immediately.
Fortunately for the Shark Tank personality, it appears that he managed to protect $2.5 million in USDC on the Polygon network by swiftly transferring it to Coinbase before the hacker could access it. Notably, the USDC that was stolen by the attacker was on the Ethereum network, not on Polygon.
In a noteworthy move, Mark Cuban also succeeded in safeguarding his valuable CryptoPunk, currently valued at least at $77,000 based on current floor prices. He achieved this by transferring it to a wallet identified as “Mark Cuban 3” on EtherScan.
Cuban’s other crypto wallets appear to remain unaffected by the breach. Mark Cuban stated, “Since I was only working with the account that got hacked, none of my others gave up anything.”
