Blockchain game Sandbox is warning its community that a security incident has resulted in some users receiving fraudulent emails impersonating the game, trying to infect them with malware.

Sandbox is a blockchain-based, open-world multiplayer game with over 350,000 monthly active users, providing them with ways to create, own, and monetize interactive content like virtual worlds, items, and experiences.

The game’s metaverse offers players several ways to earn money, such as creating pixel art NFTs that can be sold on The Sandbox NFT Marketplace or OpenSea or earning their own native “SAND” token that can be traded on Binance and Coinbase .

According to the February 26 Security Incident Notice, an attacker hacked an employee of The Sandbox into multiple email addresses belonging to the company.

Then the attacker exploited this access to send emails to users that appeared to be from The Sandbox, containing links to malware hosted on another site.

The company says the intruder was limited to this single employee’s computer and never accessed any other services or accounts.

Therefore, the impact of the incident for each user depends on whether or not the recipients of the emails clicked on the hyperlinks and installed malware on their computers.

The game publisher claims that after discovering the breach, it quickly identified the recipients of the malicious email and sent follow-up messages warning them not to open or download anything from the external website.

During this time, the compromised account was blocked from The Sandbox network, all employee passwords were reset, and two-factor authentication was enforced on all accounts.

The Sandbox advises its users to do the following:

• Enable two-factor authentication to better protect their accounts and use long, unique passwords.
• Avoid clicking on hyperlinks in e-mail messages.
• Keep anti-virus up to date and running on their systems.
• Consider formatting their computer if they suspect they have been infected with malware.

As the threat actor now has a list of Sandbox users, all in-game emails should be inspected to ensure that the links only lead to the legitimate website located at https ://sandbox.game.