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A recent phishing attack has left a cryptocurrency investor reeling from a loss of 501 eth, valued at approximately $2 million, staked through liquid recovery protocol Ether.Fi.
in chain data reveals that the theft occurred earlier today and involved two transactions. In one transaction, 426 eth was siphoned off, followed by another 75 eth in a subsequent transaction. At the time of the attack, these stolen assets were valued at approximately $1.6 million and $276,000, respectively.
As a result of the theft, the wallet's net value plummeted by more than 99.93%, leaving them with just $1,453.
Scam Sniffer, a Web3 security platform, identified The attack uses an “IncreaseAllowance” transaction, a signature commonly associated with phishing schemes that allow attackers to access funds without the victim's authorization.
More than $100 million lost to phishing scams
This incident comes amid a rise in phishing scams targeting the industry this year.
According data provided by Scam Sniffer, approximately 97,000 cryptocurrency users were defrauded of $104 million in the first few months of this year due to phishing attacks. In January losses amounted to $crypto-phishing-report”>57.7 millionfollowed by $46.8 million in February.
A breakdown of the attacks shows that ethereum users were hit the hardest, losing $78 million in assets, including eth and ERC20 tokens.
The primary method used by cybercriminals was to trick victims into signing malicious phishing signatures, such as “Uniswap Permit2” and “increaseAllowance,” which allowed malicious players to gain unauthorized access to their victims' funds.
“The majority of thefts of all ERC20 tokens were due to asset theft as a result of signing phishing firms such as Permit, GuaranteeAllowance, and Uniswap Permit2,” Scam Sniffer explained.
Scam Sniffer revealed that most of the victims were victims of misleading comments on social media platforms, particularly X (formerly Twitter). Attackers often pose as legitimate crypto organizations to lure unsuspecting people to phishing sites where their digital assets are stolen.
The post Over $2 Million in ethereum Stolen in Sophisticated Phishing Scheme appeared first on CryptoSlate.
