Hacker steals actor Bill Murray’s crypto after $185,000 NFT charity auction

A hacker stole Hollywood actor Bill Murray’s funds following an NFT (non-fungible token) charity auction that raised 119.2 ether (about $185,000).

The hacker started to drain Mr Murray’s personal wallet at around 7pm eastern time on Thursday, news site CoinDesk reported, citing on-chain data from Etherscan and details from Mr Murray’s team. The unknown individual also attempted to take non-fungible tokens from the actor’s personal collection. However, Mr Murray’s wallet security team from NFT consultancy Project Venkman stepped in to shield the actor’s NFTs by moving his high-priced JPEGs – including a Damien Hirst NFT, two CryptoPunks, a Pudgy Penguin, a Cool Cat and numerous Flower Girls – to a pair of safehouse wallets, the report said.

NFTs are digital avatars of artworks and collectibles. They can take the form of digital work, virtual lands, a domain name or even weapons in a video game.

Ownership of these digital assets is recorded on a blockchain, or digital ledger. But, unlike currencies, in which every token is of equal value and can be swapped for any other, NFTs have unique qualities that stop them from being interchangeable or fungible.

In 2021, an NFT of Twitter co-founder and former chief executive Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for about $3 million, while Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist who goes by the name Beeple, made headlines in March last year when he sold an NFT for $69m.

The report said the hacker made off with 119.2 ETH the actor had raised just one day before for a charity auction and sent the stolen funds to a wallet address tied to the crypto exchange Binance and Unionchain.ai.

Mr Murray’s team filed a police report and is working with crypto analytics firm Chainalysis to bring the attacker to justice, according to the report. The culprit has yet to be identified.

Last month, hackers stole $613 million in digital coins from token-swapping platform Poly Network, only to return $260m worth of tokens less than 24 hours later in one of the biggest cryptocurrency heists.