Virtuals Protocol's Discord server was hacked on January 8, leading to the posting of fraudulent links masquerading as the official website. The breach was attributed to a moderator falling victim to a private key compromise. Following this incident, cybersecurity firm Scam Sniffer identified three malicious links in Google Search that impersonated the Virtuals Protocol website. They advised users to avoid these links and to verify official URLs before clicking. The incident comes shortly after a critical bug was found in a Virtuals Protocol audited contract that was later addressed. Furthermore, a report from CertiK outlined that phishing scams had resulted in over $1 billion in losses for crypto users across 296 campaigns in 2024, while private key compromises accounted for $855 million in losses. The frequency of security incidents rose to 303 in 2024, marking a concerning trend for centralized services, as highlighted by experts predicting these issues will worsen due to the vulnerabilities inherent in such systems.

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