IMX Bears Discord Phishing

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IMX Bears

IMX Bears is a limited collection of pixelated bear NFTs. On October 17th, the main discord channel of the project was hacked. The attacker set up a fake minting contract, which actually simply gave them any funds which interacted with it. Once the funds (just over 10 ETH) were obtained, they were brought through TornadoCash. The project removed the mod with weak security and has agreed to fully compensate all affected users.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About IMX Bears

"IMX Bears is a collection of 1,400 unique cute pixelated bears consisting of 200+ hand drawn traits. IMX Bears launches on Immutable X, Layer 2 Ethereum, meaning there will be no gas fees for all transactions. As an IMX Bears holder, you will receive exclusive access to 'The Cave', the IMX Bears DAO!"

"We are almost at 90k discord members!! Come join the party we still have 400 whitelist spots to giveaway!"

"OCT 18th @imxbear was hacked the w/ Webhooks. Approx. 80ETH stolen (not returned)."

"The scammer used a Webhook to create a URL to send msgs to the Discord."

"Our discord was hacked. We caught and banned the hacker within 3 minutes. Our launch is in November! Please only use official links and don’t interact with anything that says “free airdrop” or “stealth mint”" "Here is a post regarding our discord being hacked last night."

"I thought mods could not post in announcements. He was able to give himself the "bot" role allowing him to bring bots in to post in announcements. This was an over look by us. We blew up very fast and had a lot of work to do so for this mistake I'm sorry."

"Of course we couldn't tell the future and know one of our mods would be hacked. He will not be allowed back in the discord."

"We went through and banned all the bots. Good news is the server is now secured! Moving forward we made sure all of our mods accounts were secured and made them turn on [2F]A. We take security very serious. We added captcha bot to the discord aswell. The[re] will never be any 'stealth drops' or staff DMing you about 'free drops'. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is!"

"We will compensate all the ETH that was scammed from our community!" "The hacker was able to take approximately 10 ETH from our community members. We are not okay with this!! We plan to give back all that ETH to the people were were a victim of this scam after launch. We will post more information on how we will collect the wallets in the future! We always have the communities back!"

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - IMX Bears Discord Phishing

Date	Event	Description
October 18th, 2021	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Technical Details

This section includes specific detailed technical analysis of any security breaches which happened. What specific software vulnerabilities contributed to the problem and how were they exploited?

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $38,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

General Prevention Policies

Never click links directly from a discord channel. Always go through the official website.

Projects need to pick their moderator teams with care, train them, and not give them any unnecessary permission levels. Greater education for all new investors would help reduce the risks of similar attacks.

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.