A cryptocurrency user has lost $68 million worth of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) after falling victim to an address-poisoning scam. Security platform Cyvers and blockchain investigator ZachXBT confirmed the $68 million theft.
Address poisoning is a technique that involves tricking the victim into sending a legitimate transaction to the wrong wallet address. The scammer does this by mimicking the first and last six characters of the legit wallet address. They then depend on the sender not noticing the differing characters of the address and sending the funds anyway. For context, wallet addresses can be as long as 42 characters, which shows how easy it is to miss a few characters if not paying close attention.
In this case of theft, the exploiter faked a wallet for a 0.05 ETH transaction before receiving 1,155 WBTC from the victim.
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Hackers and scammers are unfortunately all over the crypto world, using tactics like this to steal from investors. Millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency are stolen every year by scam artists. This reveals why there is such a hot debate between the industry and regulators like the SEC on hammering down on cryptocurrency. The crypto market is home to scammers who use address poisoning and other tactics to commit crimes. If you plan on sending funds to a crypto wallet, make sure you have some knowledge of said wallet and, most importantly all of the address numbers.