How To Lose Your NFTs To Hackers?

Consult our checklist to see if your NFTs are under proper security!

It never hurts to revisit the crypto security tips as we, NFT enthusiasts, often tend to hit the snooze button when it comes to protecting our collectibles from cybercriminals. Seeing even crypto OGs fall victim to NFT scams only goes to show we should be on guard at all times. 

In this post, Noft Games will give you an extra reminder and a few safety practices for managing NFTs, as well as a couple of useful links 🔗 for further study. 

How NOT to lose your NFTs. Wrong answers only 

Here is a checklist we compiled of every action that an NFT holder could do to get all of their assets wiped out in a second. Make sure to not take any!

Fundamentals

• Storing your seed phrase and private keys online

Do you email yourself a secret recovery phrase given to you while setting up the wallet? Or keep it in iPhone notes? Avoiding any online exposure is the first and foremost step to preventing funds in the wallet from draining. The seed phrase is giving access to anyone who takes over it. All further protection strides will pretty much go south be this one precaution ignored. 

• Using one wallet for all 

Having one wallet and having to remember only one seed phrase is an easy solution. However, risks of being attacked by hackers rise as you continuously reuse one wallet address for every crypto transaction. Being overly active with a single wallet may put you on the hackers’ radar. What’s scarier, they can easily figure out which NFTs and cryptocurrencies you have through a block explorer:  

Random Wallet Holdings via Etherscan.io

⚠️ Handy tip: it may be lifesaving to have separate wallets for gaming tokens, storing NFTs, minting them, and a dedicated one for regular crypto transactions so that if any of those is compromised, others stay untouched.    

Wallet System by @kevinrose via Twitter 

• Never using a cold storage  

Hardware wallets take a little bit of hassle to operate and extra money to get. However, they are designed to bring you ultimate security if handled wisely. The very essence of a cold wallet is it’s a physical device, not connected to the Internet when not utilized. 

Having your most precious Non-Fungible Tokens in a cold wallet is top-tier security, provided you never connect this hardware to a minting website and transfer NFTs there from your hot wallet only.  

NFT-Specific Security 

• Blindsigning Smart Contract approvals 

Be careful with approvals you give to a website or dApp when connecting your wallet. Make sure the website is trusted and authentic. Scammers tend to imitate existing popular platforms to get access to your wallet and steal holdings. 

Back in 2022, a multitude of MetaMask wallets were drained simply by getting this one “Set Approval for All” signed, which does what it says – grants full control over all of the funds in the wallet in question. So, triple check the source website when confirming it! 

Source: Twitter 

🔗 For more insights, we recommend you to visit the @0xCygaar thread clearing out the issue in more detail.  

• Never revoking irrelevant approvals 

Revoking old and unauthorized permissions to smart contracts is the ultimate safety practice. There are many tools that facilitate the process for you, or, it can be made through Etherscan for ERC tokens without involving third parties. 

🔗 Find the ultimate step-by-step guide thread kindly laid out by @SimonartOnline.  

• Failing to recognize fake minting 

On marketplaces like OpenSea, one can easily come across a fake NFT, misleading you into believing it’s something it’s not. For this sake, checking the contract address behind the asset is the major thing that helps to distinguish fraud. Every legit project makes its contract address public, so spend a couple of minutes to go and check it on the developers' website and block explorer to avoid scams. 

Source: Kevin Whitsitt via LinkedIn 

Make sure you do not tick any of the boxes given above! For further research, visit our 🔗 guide to the most common crypto scams and red flags to spot fraudulent schemes. 

🔗 For more insights, consider visiting a super beginner friendly and extensive NFT security thread by @punk6529.

Bottom Line 

All the solutions to “How do you protect NFTs from hackers?” come down to two major points: recognition of personal responsibility for your investments and keeping up with the latest and most popular crypto scams out there.  

We didn’t focus on general Internet Security tips for this article, yet, it goes without saying that common precautions such as using VPN, avoiding public Wi-Fi connections for crypto activity and clicking random links from shady resources are always relevant. 

Hope yall are staying safe out there and approaching every aspect of the crypto world with healthy doubt. Bare with us for more of insightful posts!