Crypto Phishing Scams Cost $47 Million in February as the Number of Victims Increased
Journalist
- ETH.
- Microstrategy’s X account hack remained a hot topic.
In February, hackers stole nearly $47 million through crypto phishing scams. The majority of victims fell victim to fake X accounts (formerly Twitter).
According to Web3 anti-fraud platform Scam Sniffer, the number of phishing victims reached 57,000 in February, a 40% increase compared to January.
The total damage dealt by these attacks has decreased by 14%.
Ethereum and ERC-20 will be the biggest losers
Leading decentralized finance (DeFi) chain Ethereum [ETH] Layer-2 (L2) networks were responsible for more than three-quarters of the losses. [ARB] With a share of 7.4%.
Unsurprisingly, 86% of the stolen assets were ERC20 tokens.
Source: Scam Sniffer/Dune
Fake accounts deceive users
The biggest conclusion of the report was the damage caused by fake accounts on social media.
Scam Sniffer posted a photo showing how phishers tricked users into believing they were X accounts from major crypto projects.
Source: Scam Sniffer
Phishing is one of the oldest cybercrime tricks. It involves impersonating an official entity in order to steal confidential data from users who are not aware of it.
In the crypto world, tricks are used to get users’ private keys. The private keys are used to access users’ wallets and extract their funds.
Growing Threat
Scam Sniffer reported that crypto phishing scams would cost nearly $300 million in 2023. In 2018, more than 320,000 users fell victim to such fraudulent campaigns.
Recently, a new method was developed to trick users into clicking on “Airdrop claim links”. These are just links to websites that are a drain on your wallet.
Prominent Bitcoin [BTC] Last month, Wal’s MicroStrategy-X account was hacked to post a fake airdrop link.
Previously, email systems from leading Web3 companies such as Token Terminal were compromised and used to send airdrop claim links. These two incidents resulted in a significant loss of money.
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