After falling victim to a sophisticated phishing scam, 14 bored apes were apprehended in Vietnam.
A South Korean province is using the Metaverse to strengthen economic ties with Vietnam. Gyeongbuk Province in South Korea has announced plans to use Web3 technology to strengthen economic ties with Vietnam.
The province’s governor, Lee Cheol-woo, said in a Dec. 19 announcement that the metaverse project would focus on “growing economic, cultural, commercial, and people-centered contacts with Vietnam.”
In June, the province announced a $13.8 million investment to establish itself as a metaverse innovation hub in the hopes of growing the local economy.
Since the beginning of 2022, South Korea has been very active in Metaverse development, with the goal of becoming the world’s fifth most metaverse-ready country. It has set aside $186.7 million to develop Expanded Virtual World, an all-encompassing metaverse platform.
Serpent, a cybersecurity analyst, detailed in a lengthy December 17 post how a scammer allegedly stole 14 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) nonfungible tokens (NFTs) via a month-long social engineering scam.
According to the analyst, the scam started when the victim was asked to licence the IP rights for the Apes, with the scammer claiming to be a “casting director working for ‘Forte Pictures'” on an NFT-related film called “”Time’s Revenge.” He claimed that the alias used by the alleged scammer was a forgery, despite the fact that Forte Pictures is a legitimate company (and not involved).
They offered a bid for the NFTs and directed the victim to a fake NFT platform where they were asked to “sign the contract” using a fake website, fake pitches, legal contracts, and other elaborate subterfuge including Twitter spaces to build credibility “This is where the wallet was drained.
“The bogus website displayed a gas-free Seaport signature, which they claimed he needed to sign for the licence. The signature, however, “actually created a private bundle listing of all of the victim’s BAYCs to the scammer for 0.00000001 ETH,” Serpent explained.
“The scammer’s wallet, which was funded by Secret Network, used the match orders function to complete the private sale. “The scammer then accepted the highest WETH offers on all of the NFTs and converted the 852.86 WETH to 1.07m DAI,” the analyst continued.
Manchester United Football Club (Man U) has issued its first NFTs on the Tezos blockchain.
The initial drop, according to the collections website, was free and only required fans to sign in using their Tezos wallets to claim an NFT.
NFTs were divided into three groups based on rarity — classic, rare, and ultra rare — and were distributed at random to subscribers.
Each NFT serves as a key, granting access to competitions, tickets, Discord content, and the opportunity to join the club’s new virtual world, which is set to launch at a later date.
Social media sleuths are questioning whether former US President Donald Trump’s NFT collectible project used images from other sources.
On December 15, the former president unveiled a collection of 45,000 NFT trading cards depicting himself in various outfits, including golf attire, hunting gear, and a superhero costume.
Some Twitter users conducted reverse image searches on Google in the days following the NFT drop and discovered similarities between the NFTs and images from a variety of other sources, including Amazon and Shutterstock.
In one case, Matthew Sheffield, a self-described right-wing media operative, compared an NFT of Trump wearing waders and holding a rifle to a hunting apparel company’s very similar wader set.
Amazon’s new series ‘NFTMe’ investigates NFT culture and disruption around the world, as artists, collectors, and industry professionals from around the world share their experiences with NFTs and how the marriage of art and technology has benefited their daily lives.
