[German]The popular online marketplace for Lego® bricks, Bricklink, is suspected to have been the victim of a cyber attack. The marketplace has currently been taken offline and states "Maintenance in progress" on its homepage. Individual accounts are probably posting messages from the hackers. There is a clear warning on the marketplace page that "Stormtrooper" is not a maintenance guy.
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Who or what is Bricklink?
Bricklink® i is (according to its own statement) the world's largest online marketplace for buying and selling LEGO® parts, mini figures and sets, both new and used. If you are looking for Lego® bricks or want to sell them frequently, you are probably in good hands on the internationally active platform (the eBay of the little Lego® man).
Unusual activities, store offline
There seems to have been "unusual activity" in the BrickLink online store for a few days now. BrickLink's X account doesn't know anything about this yet, as I saw during a quick check – the last post was from Oct. 31, 2023.
However, the Bricklink website currently indicates maintenance work in the top right-hand corner (see graphic) and only displays a static graphic. There is a clear warning at the bottom of the page:
Stormtrooper is not a maintenance man.
We're sorry Bricklink continues to be unavailable.
Update November 4th. 3.55 pm EST We continue to investigate the unusual activity. We aim to restore normal operations as swiftly as possible.
Also on November 4, 2023, it says that unusual activities are being monitored. Furthermore, since "Stormtrooper" is not a maintenance man. It looks like someone has been sending posts to registered users of the marketplace under this name.
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On November 3, 2023, there was already the following post on X, where someone refers to a possible hack of the marketplace. Reference is then made to a reddit.com post.
Within the reddit.com post someone has published the following screenshot of a BrickLink account, which indicates a hack. The screenshot contains a message from the attacker.
In the screenshot above, the hacker writes that he or she has or could have hacked all BrickLink accounts. The message should remain, they will start deleting entries from the store in 30 minutes and demand 50,000 euros in a BTC wallet (bitcoins) to be handed over. One user suspects that the operator has taken the platform offline because several user accounts have been hacked in the last week. This refers to this reddit.com post. I found the following screenshot of another account in an internal Facebook group.
One seller says: "URGENT! Bricklink is unfortunately currently under attack. If you are a seller, PLEASE download your inventory and take precautions." A blog also has reported the incident here. There is no official statement from BrickLink (owned by Lego®) as far as I know.
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