Tokens are proving to be dangerous weapons of digital deception: they weren't born to do harm, they were born to be able to share, like quotas, of participation in projects that raise funds for specific functions. Analogous to standard investment funds in the traditional financial market.

One hacker, “Monsieur Personne” (Mr Nobody, in French), has proven that, despite rave reviews from the media about the inviolability of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), they are actually not that unique and not that secure.

In May, to demonstrate what he called “NFT hype nonsense,” he created fake copies of the world's most expensive NFTs.

Including the one that represents the work “Everydays: the First 5000 Days”, by Michael Winkelmann, sold for $69.3 million by Christie's gallery in 2021.

In one post, on twitter, the hacker takes a stand, after a series of unsuccessful attempts to alert the media and information security companies that they are wrong in NFT security, he decided to demonstrate the problem on his own.

He initially shared his conclusions with a limited circle of people, without success. Hence, to be taken seriously, he decided to demonstrate.

He created his own NFT on the Ethereum blockchain - in fact the same technology used to duplicate real cryptocurrency servers for hackers theft - which also houses the artist's original NFT.

Monsieur Personne then configured the components of his NFT so that his ID and transaction history were similar to that of Winkelmann's token.

Detail: it is not the owner of the original NFT, but an average inattentive observer might think otherwise, in fact it would pass for the owner.

It's not fake NFT content – ​​anyone can download an exact copy of Beeple's painting from the Internet simply by Googleing its name.

Just as anyone can look at or own a digital painting (it's like owning a reproduction of a work of art). But it is difficult to provide cryptographic proof that the person is the owner of the original artwork.

The cryptographic proof is the NFT, exclusive and created by the artist himself.

As the token is stored in the blockchain, the transaction history is expected to be securely protected, but Monsieur Personne decided to dispel this misconception.

The token created by Monsieur Personne does not compromise the authenticity of the original painting. However, it will be very difficult for users to determine which is the original painting and which is the fake one.

With this, the hacker proves the following concept:

Anyone can advertise a work or media on the NFT auction and sale platforms, even if that person is not the author, artist or person responsible for the work, allowing forgery.

Also, it is possible, for example, to sell an NFT of a tweet where you are sharing someone else's work, but when you make the sale, no money goes to the author of the work.

There is no way to guarantee that a work will not be falsified or cloned.

But, this is not an exclusive feature of NFTs, but of the entire digital scene.

A serious artist who is already known outside the digital world will not risk his credibility by selling a tokenized work as something “exclusive” to, a few months later, sell the same work again. However, nothing prevents this from happening to anonymous artists".

As for theft, it depends on the buyer. The editor recommends careful management of NFTs, as should be done with cryptocurrency digital wallets, in addition to being careful to avoid falling into phishing, social engineering or malware-infected scams.

Another security issue that directly involves NFTs is the possibility of selling works for a lot of money, even if they are not the author or artist who created the work.

Anyone can advertise a work on NFT buying and selling sites.

It is to be understood, in this universe, that the NFT only registers the certificate of possession of a certain digital file, usually a work of art or similar.

But, there is no way to control the exhibition of the work or even use it to generate a false code to divert the purchase and sale value. Worse, it will be legalized from the buyer's point of view.

The point is that this theft mechanism is not exclusive to NFT tonek, cryptocurrencies suffer from the same problem.

Project tokens can also be made maliciously, just to enrich the founders of the token.

While this process is also not regulatory and recognized in terms of patents or copyrights by the community and countries, obtaining an NFT certificate does not, today, have any right besides proving the "ownership" of the work.

Note, however, that ownership is different from ownership.

In order to have ownership, anything must be recognized by the tax and civil bodies of their respective countries. If that doesn't exist, it ends up in litigation.

It is a fact that digital orbs needed a token to match, but there is still a long way to go before guaranteeing the security and full rights of the "owners" of these works.

This, unfortunately, is the price to be paid for transnationality.