OpenSea Confirms Data Breach, Warns Users Of 'Malicious Actors' And Phishing Attempts

NFT marketplace OpenSea has suffered a data breach.
“If you have shared your email with OpenSea in the past, you should assume you were impacted," the company said in a prepared statement. "We are working with Customer.io in their ongoing investigation, and we have reported this incident to law enforcement.”

The email addresses of users and subscribers are believed to have been acquired using fraudulent means by an employee of OpenSea's email delivery vendor. As a result, there may be a heightened likelihood of email phishing attempts.

“Please be aware that malicious actors may try to contact you using an email address that looks visually similar to our official email domain, ‘opensea.io’,” the NFT marketplace stated.

The security breach has been reported to law enforcement agencies.

The news comes on the heels of OpenSea’s former head of product, Nathaniel Chastain, being charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Chastain used confidential information about what NFTs were going to be featured on OpenSea’s homepage for his personal financial gain.

He was subsequently arrested.

Since then, OpenSea co-founder and CEO Derin Finzer committed to stepping up efforts to prevent thefts, plagiarism, scams and intellectual property infringements on the marketplace.

“At our scale, comprehensive policies were not enough," he said.

The company has launched a new verification system that identifies authentic accounts and content more prominently to keep scammers out. OpenSea touts that its copy mint prevention system is the most sophisticated spam and fraud reduction tool the company has built.