Scam Sniffer brought attention to a troubling trend that was noticed in January in a discussion that was posted on X on February 9. The thread noted that phishing assaults had increased in January in tandem with increased activity in cryptocurrency groups as a result of many airdrops that month.

These frauds, which frequently coincide with airdrops and other project-related activities, have affected almost 40,000 people.

Fraudsters Pose as Projects and Take $55 Million

Scam Sniffer reports that scammers mimicking a variety of projects, including Manta Network, Frame, SatoshiVM, AltLayer, Dymension, zkSync, Pyth, OpenSea, Optimism, Blast, and others, built more than 11,000 phishing websites in January.

The top seven victims lost a total of $17 million as a result of phishing signatures like ERC20 Permit, Create2, increaseAllowance, and Swap, demonstrating the effectiveness of their efforts.

Making Use of Smart Contract Features

According to Scam Sniffer, hackers frequently took advantage of the ERC-20 Permit feature to deceive users into unintentionally sending money from their non-custodial wallets while seeming to be conducting legal business.

Furthermore, the criminals made extensive use of the increaseAllowance function, which gave them control over the token allowances provided to malicious smart contracts. In order to avoid discovery, the scammers also used Create2 to generate temporary addresses.

Because fraudsters are regularly publishing fraudulent comments on several platforms under the guise of respectable projects like Optimism and zkSync, many people have fallen victim to these scams.

In 2023, Crypto Cyberattacks Amounted to $2 Billion.

According to a previous investigation by CryptoPotato, scammers and hackers carried out multiple hacks and rug pulls throughout 2023, which led to the theft of $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrencies.

According to De.Fi’s REKT database, there were at least 455 incidents in 2023. Multichain was responsible for the greatest attack, which totaled $231 million. White hat hackers and cybersecurity specialists managed to retrieve about $200 million of the total thanks to their efforts.

2023: Ethereum Takes the Lead in Hacks

In five of the twelve months of 2023, Ethereum accounted for almost 70% of the funds that were taken, taking the lead in hack frequency. The most serious vulnerability of the year was Access Control, which was responsible for half of all cash lost. Unauthorized access by hackers or insiders to hot wallets resulted in large losses, with each occurrence averaging $31 million. Attacks against Flash Loans came soon after, with a total of slightly more than $275 million being taken.

The concerning increase in cryptocurrency phishing attempts highlights the necessity for users to be cautious and implement stronger security measures in order to safeguard their digital assets against the constantly changing strategies used by hackers and scammers.