Magic Eden’s Nonfungible Token (NFT) Market has pledged to refund all users who were tricked into buying fake NFTs on their website as a result of the exploit.
In a January 4 statement, the company said a bug in the “activity index” it recently deployed for Snappy Marketplace and the Pro Trade tool essentially allows fake NFTs to be verified and registered alongside the collection of genuine NFTs.
Magic Eden said the exploit resulted in 25 fraudulent NFTs being sold across four collections in the last 24 hours, but has now confirmed that additional NFTs were affected in the last day.
The two affected projects are the high-priced and popular Solana-based ABC and y00ts collections.
Don’t buy this @y00tsNFT at @MagicEdenthey are fake!
In fact, with every fake collection in Magiceden, mass exploitation is underway.
High value NFTs suffer the most, as attackers choose to use higher value NFTs first. pic.twitter.com/35RYHOKVxd
— HGE.SOL ♂️ (@HGESOL) January 4, 2023
The NFT platform says it has fixed the problem by temporarily disabling the device and removing “entry points” that allow unverified NFTs to pass through.
It also asks users to perform a “hard refresh” to ensure unverified listings no longer appear in their browser sessions and disable unverified NFT purchases as a precaution.
“Magic Eden is safe to trade and we will refund all users who mistakenly purchased unverified NFTs specifically because of this issue,” it wrote.
Earlier today, unverified NFTs were shown as part of the verified collection on ME. In the last day, the impact was on 25 unverified NFTs that were sold in 4 collections.
We have resolved the issue and will refund those affected. Currently, no one can buy unverified NFTs in ME.
– Magic Eden (@MagicEden) January 4, 2023
The first Magic Eden purple alarm over fraudulent NFTs in a post on Twitter on January 4, stating public reports that people were able to buy fake ABC NFTs. At the time, it said it was adding a “verification layer” to resolve the issue.
Following the announcement, Twitter users continued to sound the alarm over fake NFT y00ts circulating on the platform. A screenshot from ABC creator “HGE” shows at least two sales worth 100 Solana (SOL), totaling $2,600.
DeGods, creator of y00ts, too tweeted for followers there is an exploit in Magic Eden that allows unverified NFTs to be listed as part of the collection.
There is currently an exploit in Magic Eden that allows unverified NFTs to be listed as part of the collection.
You can verify that the NFT is part of the collection on our explore page linked below
If it’s not in our browser, it’s not our NFThttps://t.co/c4HKIJJD1n
— DeGods III (@DeGodsNFT) January 4, 2023
The latest exploit is now the second incident Magic Eden users have had to deal with this week.
On January 3, the market was full of pornographic images and pictures from the television series The Big Bang Theory.
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Magic Eden said a third-party image hosting provider was “compromised” leading to “unsightly images” and assured NFT users that they were safe.
Cointelegraph contacted Magic Eden for comment but did not immediately receive a response.