Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's X (previously Twitter) account was allegedly hijacked. According to famed blockchain investigator ZachXBT, the incident cost victims over $691,000 when they clicked on a malicious link.

Dmitry Buterin, Vitalik's father, disclosed on X on September 9 that his son's account had been compromised:

“Disregard this post, apparently Vitalik has been hacked. He is working on restoring access.”

The post to which he was referring has subsequently been removed. It was posted on Buterin's account, proclaiming the arrival of "Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum."

The hacker distributed a bogus link to a supposed free commemorative nonfungible token (NFT), luring victims into connecting their wallets before taking all of their assets.

As a result of this occurrence, Ethereum developer Bok Khoo, also known as Bokky Poobah on X, has claimed that he has incurred losses in his CryptoPunk NFT collection.

The current floor price for a CryptoPunk NFT is 46.99 Ether (ETH), which is roughly comparable to $76,837 at the time of posting.

ZachXBT has been keeping his 438,200 followers up to date on the hacker's activities. He just revealed that the most value NFT pilfered thus far is CryptoPunk #3983, which is worth 153.62 ETH, or around $250,543.

A user going by the nickname Satoshi 767 speculated that Buterin may not have installed adequate security measures for his X account, noting that SIM-swap assaults are a "common mistake" for many cryptocurrency project founders.

However, ZachXBT refuted these claims, claiming that Buterin's high profile puts him vulnerable to numerous types of hacking attempts:

“You do not know yet whether it was a SIM swap. Vitalik is a big enough target to where an insider could have been paid off or panel was used,” ZachXBT said.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-vitalik-buterin-x-hackers-drain

https://twitter.com/BlockGeekDima/status/1700648110735724564