Premint compensates victims of exploitation

Premint, a leading NFT platform, completed the reimbursement of its subscribers who were victims of the July 17 exploitation on Thursday. The protocol made the revelation in a tweet shared on its verified handle. According to Premint, it gave over 310Ξ to subscribers who reportedly lost NFTs to the incident. 

More so, the NFT protocol revealed that it gave 7Ξ to users who lost their ETH to the crisis. Premint went further to share a link which shows the details of all the repayments made.

Premint had, on July 17 exploitation, promised to compensate all affected victims. Through last week’s post, the protocol admonished all affected victims of the exploitation to insert their wallet details in a particular document. 

Similarly, Brenden Mulligan, the CEO of Premint, announced that the protocol hired a third-party agent to help perform an on-chain analysis of the security breach. According to Mulligan, Premint collaborated with the third party to compile the list of all the affected users.

Notably, the NFT protocol reportedly suffered a security breach in mid-July. As revealed, the exploitation ensued after a hacker compromised the protocol’s website. Afterwards, the hacker deployed a malicious JS code on the project’s official website. 

Reportedly, the hacker consequently induced all unsuspecting platform users to use the phishing link. However, some users who suspected the phishing link took to Twitter and Discord to sensitize others against falling prey, but it was already late as few had become vulnerable.

This security breach allowed the hacker to access the victims’ wallets, carting away vast amounts of funds. According to Premint, the exploitation led to a loss of about $400,000.

Additionally,  the NFT registration protocol described the victims of the attack as a “relatively small number of users”. Premint averred that Etherscan, an analytical platform for Ethereum, reportedly linked over four wallet addresses to the hack. 

Similarly, a pioneer in blockchain security, Certik, said the hackers siphoned about 314 NFTs from Premint. According to CertiK, the tokens stolen from the protocol were tokens from popular projects like Bored Ape, Goblintown, and Otherside.

As reported, the hacker flipped the stolen assets on OpenSea. According to a report by Certik, the exploiter sold about 302 NFTs for 275 ETH, equivalent to $400,000, while keeping 18 tokens. More so, the blockchain security firm hinted that the hacker transferred the  275 ETH to Tornado Cash, a decentralized mixer protocol. This, as revealed, was done to obscure all the incurred transaction details. 

In recent times, crypto experts have called for the outright ban of crypto mixers. They claim the technology usually paves the way for hackers to siphon funds without traces. According to a 2022 Chainalysis report, over 10% of all stolen cryptocurrencies are usually transferred to mixers. 

The report added that about $600 million worth of crypto had been lost to crypto mixing services within the Q2 of 2022. According to the author of Financial Crimes, Jefferey Robinson, crypto mixers function as an enabler of illicit operations, including money laundering. He urged concerned authorities to illegalize the usage.

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