A recent disconcerting event caught the crypto community off guard when a Kraken wallet holder was duped out of $4.46 million in Tether (USDT). A deeper look into Etherscan’s records pinpointed the final destination of these stolen funds—an address with the tail-end “ACa7.” It is the latest in a growing list of successful phishing attacks.
Behind The Scene: Identifying The Phishing Culprit
PeckShield, a renowned blockchain security firm, quickly marked this address as a scammer’s. Scam Sniffer’s analysis shed light on the association between this address and a dubious Coinone cryptocurrency mining platform to further corroborate this claim.
The crypto space witnessed another shock when NONE—a premier toolkit for crypto and NFT trades—halted its functions. The root cause? A deployer and NONE tokens were swindled out of a staggering 41.52 ETH.
September 6 brought more grim news. A crypto magnate inadvertently enabled a heist, losing an eye-watering $24 million in liquid-staked Ethereum. Delving into the matter, it was deduced that the victim had unintentionally permitted token access to these con artists, all thanks to the “increase allowance” transaction approval.
Utilizing a Dune Analytics dashboard from a blockchain intelligence agency, we can gauge the scale of these phishing attacks. A jaw-dropping sum of $337 million in USDT has been embezzled, leaving a trail of approximately 22k victims.
Understanding The Scam Mechanism
The Global Anti-Scam Organisation states that such approval mining scams are craftily designed. They hoodwink victims into unwittingly authorizing unlimited withdrawals from their crypto purses.
When individuals set up a self-managed crypto wallet, they are given an encrypted ‘private key.’ Contrary to popular belief, scammers don’t need this seed phrase. Instead, they lure victims into fraudulent mining pools. The catch? An innocent click on a button appears to charge a modest network fee in Ether.
These so-called “mining scams” masquerade as legitimate “mining” or “liquidity pools.” The reality is far more sinister—they deceive users into granting boundless access to their crypto holdings. These scams often come equipped with round-the-clock “customer service” chats, only to provide misleading narratives.
Disclaimer
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