Hollywood superstar Bill Murray apparently had his Ethereum wallet hacked last night. The currency stolen was supposed to fund a charity auction in order to help a three-year-old girl dealing with a life-threatening illness.
The wallet was being used to sell official NFTs inspired by Murray’s illustrious career. The attack happened right after a charity auction earlier this week.
In the end, around 110 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), worth roughly $174,000 at the time of the hack, were taken from the wallet.
Following this week’s auction of an exclusive, one-of-a-kind NFT on Coinbase NFT, which brought in 119.2 WETH, or roughly $185,000 at the time of sale, the funds were taken from the wallet. All of the money was set aside for charity reasons.
Murray is the co-owner of blockchain business “Project Venkman”. alongside Gavin Gillas.
Gillas revealed to Decrypt that he initially saw an unauthorized transaction last night that removed 108.03 WETH (about $171,500) from the wallet, followed by another transaction for 1.73 WETH (around $2,750).
He later confirmed that those were the only transactions in which WETH was taken.
The wallet also contained other NFTs that Murray owns through his business partners, such as CryptoPunks, VeeFriends, and Damien Hirst artwork. About 800 Ethereum NFTs from the Bill Murray 1000 project are also in the wallet.
Fortunately, none of the NFTs were taken. In the hours that followed the attack, all of the remaining Bill Murray 1000 NFTs, along with those from other projects, were transferred into different wallets.
A Police Report Was Filed
Gillas stated that he filed a police report regarding the attack, and also contacted Chainalysis, a company that specializes in blockchain forensics and security.
“We engaged Chainalysis within 10 minutes of learning of the attack last night,” Murray’s partner told Decrypt, “They’ll have a bigger report on that, and they’re still investigating all of the threads.”
Project Venkman Was Victim of Another Hack Shortly After
Gavin Gillas believes that the hackers gained access to the wallet via some sort of wallet-draining malware.
According to Gillas, a Project Venkman employee also had his wallet stolen yesterday, which could link the vulnerability to a compromised work computer.
The Bill Murray NFT Auction
The NFT auction portraying the star of “Ghostbusters” was created in order to gather funds for the Chive Charities Organization.
Chive Charities is an organization that supports military veterans alongside their families, first responders, and individuals with rare medical diagnoses that have a profound impact on their lives.
The stolen funds were designated to help care for a three-year-old child called Evelyn, who suffers from intractable epilepsy and the symptoms of a rare gene mutation.
The Good News
Fortunately, one of the auction bidders who goes by the nickname of mishap72 chose to cover the ETH loss in order to fund the three-year-old’s medical care.
In case Bill Murray’s team is able to recover the hacked currency, the fund will also go to Evelyn’s medical treatment.
The charity organization Chive Charities also started a Gofundme page in order to help with Evelyn’s medical costs.
