Crypto Whale Suffers $24 Million Loss In Phishing Attack

The crypto space still presents risks like scams, hacks, rug pulls, etc. In another troubling event, a crypto whale lost over $24 million worth of assets in a massive phishing scam. 

In this case, the victim address is regarded as a major liquidity provider on the Uniswap Decentralized Exchange (DEX), supplying over $1.6 million worth of liquidity to the exchange’s WBTC/USDT pool. This particular whale is also active on other DeFi protocols, including Aave, Curve, 1inch, and blockchains such as EOS and the OMG Network. 

Crypto Scammer Strikes Again?

According to a report from the “Web 3 Anti-Scam” platform, Scam Sniffer, this latest crypto scam occurred when the victim granted token access to the scammer through the authorization of “increaseAllowance” transactions. 

Following this process, the bad actor was able to transfer out approximately 4,851 stETH and 9,579 rETH valued at $24.23 million.

Interestingly, Scam Snifer notes the scammer’s address has been affiliated with 10 phishing sites such as coindroplet.net, trustpad.ca, etc. 

insane! someone lost $24.23m worth of stETH and rETH to crypto phishing 8 hours ago!https://t.co/CKeSxGkbjU pic.twitter.com/Xq46p10NlP

— Scam Sniffer (@realScamSniffer) September 7, 2023

Providing more information on this latest heist, blockchain security firm Peckshield confirms the scammer has already swapped the stolen assets for approximately 13,785 ETH and 1.64 million DAI. 

In addition, the bad actor transferred about 451,000 DAI to FixedFloat, a crypto platform popularly known for allowing users to swap one token for another at a fixed rate seamlessly. 

In most cases, when it comes to these attacks, scammers send an official-looking email, prompting potential victims to input their wallet’s private keys on a certain website. Using this information, they can acquire ownership of all assets on the address. 

Stake’s Hackers On The Move

In other news, Peckshield has provided an update on another recent crypto heist. On September 4, popular crypto casino Stake experienced a hack, leading to the loss of over $40 million comprising 9,620 ETH, 14.24 million MATIC, and 82,650 BNB.

Peckshield reported on September 7 that the Stake hacker has now swapped 3.376 million MATIC for 72.29 BTC, valued at $1.8 million. In addition, about 800,000 MATIC tokens were sent to two newly created wallets.

At the time of writing, the bad actor holds 10.1 million MATIC, valued at $5.7 million, and 72.29 BTC on the Polygon network. Like scams, hacks represent a major problem in the digital asset industry. According to a recent Certik security report, over $313 million was lost to crypto hacks and scams in Q2 2023.