Magic Eden Blames Unsavory Pics on Third-Party Breach

Solana’s largest non-fungible token marketplace Magic Eden recently found itself in a bizarre situation after the platform displayed pornographic images and stills from the award-winning comedy series The Big Bang Theory instead of NFT collections.

Shortly after the incident, users began speculating that the NFT marketplace may have been compromised. However, Magic Eden clarified that the incident was caused by a third-party image hosting provider supposedly experiencing a security breach.

Magic Eden Not Under Attack 

Sharing the news on Twitter, the Solana-based NFT platform said it had not been hacked, assuring users that their assets were unaffected by the unsavory images.

The announcement came after some of the company’s customers reported the incident on Twitter, asking the platform to explain what happened.

Anyone else seeing the characters from the series Big Bang Theory very quickly while loading their items on Magic Eden?

WTH did I just witness @MagicEden pic.twitter.com/7JFccFfGv9

— Clôwn (@Yaboibeclownin) January 3, 2023

A Twitter user said he saw stills from the Big Bang Theory before eventually seeing their digital artwork on the platform.

“Anyone else seeing the characters from the series Big Bang Theory very quickly while loading their items on Magic Eden? WTH did I just witness,” the tweet reads.

Magic Eden explained that a hard refresh before accessing the platform would fix the issue. The glitch appears to have been fixed at press time.

Hey guys our image provider, a 3rd party service we use to cache images, was compromised. Your NFTs are safe and Magic Eden has not been hacked. Unfortunately you might’ve seen some um, unsavory images. Make sure you do a hard refresh on your browser to fix it.

— Magic Eden 🪄 (@MagicEden) January 3, 2023

NFT Hacks on the Rise

While the exploit did not lead to theft or loss of assets, hackers are continuously targeting NFT users and marketplaces.

In 2022, the crypto industry recorded multiple attacks on NFT trading platforms. Some episodes included the OpenSea hack, which saw the platform lose millions of dollars to cybercriminals.

OpenSea suffered a phishing attack that affected at least 32 users. The hackers stole valuable NFTs worth around $1.7 million from the exploit.

A month after OpenSea’s attack, another NFT marketplace, TreasureDAO, suffered a massive security breach that saw hackers stealing over 100 NFTs from the platform.

According to blockchain security company Peckshield, the exploit resulted from “a bug in distinguishing ERC721 and ERC1155 in buyItem, which miscalculates the price of ERC721 as ERC1155 with the (untrusted) given 0 quantity.”

In July, hackers attacked the popular NFT registration protocol Premint and made away with 320 digital artworks listed on the platform. Some stolen NFTs include expensive collections from Bored Ape Yacht Club, Otherside, Moonbirds Oddities, and Goblintown.