A cryptocurrency investor had 1,155 WBTC worth about $72 million stolen, after falling victim to the "Poisoning Address" scam.
According to Cyver Alerts, the incident started on the evening of May 3 when the investor created a new wallet and sent 0.05 ETH to test. The crook quickly created another wallet with the first 6 and last 5 characters matching the victim's wallet, then sent 0 ETH to this wallet to disguise the transaction. The hacker created the wallet address:
0xd9A1C3788D81257612E2581A6ea0aDa244853a91 has the same first and last 6 characters as the address 0xd9A1b0B1e1aE382DbDc898Ea68012FfcB2853a91 to which the victim wants to go.
Some cryptocurrency wallet management applications, like Zerion, only display a portion of the wallet address in the transaction history. This confuses the victim, believing that the crook's wallet is his wallet. Zerion's interface is even more misleading when it shows a transaction receiving ETH from a fraudster's wallet as a sending transaction. It cannot be ruled out that the investor used a type of wallet like the above.
Finally, the investor copied the nearest wallet address, which was actually the crook's wallet, and sent 1155 WBTC, equivalent to 72 million USD, there.
ALERTAre we mistaken, or has someone truly lost $68M worth of $WBTC? Our system has detected another address falling victim to address poisoning, losing 1155 $WBTC. Victim: https://t.co/5NKlOFnepJAddress poisoner: https://t.co/R6fF0QipBHPoison transaction:… pic.twitter.com/UpG34ZcZvY
— Cyvers Alerts (@CyversAlerts) May 3, 2024
This incident warns about the sophistication of scams in the cryptocurrency field. Investors need to carefully check the wallet address before making transactions, and limit the use of wallet management applications that only display part of the wallet address.