Record $70.5 Million Loss in Crypto 'Address Poisoning' Scam

By: Eliza Bennet

A crypto trader suffered a severe blow, losing out on 1,155 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), equivalent to $70.5 million in an 'address poisoning' scam, an all-time high for this type of cybersecurity breach, according to Cyvers Alert, a leading blockchain security organization.

In an address poisoning scam, scammers create dubious addresses closely resembling the legitimate ones. These addresses, which share identical beginning and ending characters, are used for conducting a crypto transfer to the victim's wallet, effectively tainting the transaction history. Victims unknowingly copy the compromised address from the transaction log, thus directing the funds to the scammer's wallet.

Cyvers founder and CTO, Meir Dolev, confirms this suspicious activity, reiterating it to be the highest value lost due to an address-poisoning scam. Notably, the prevalence of such attacks was highlighted last year by Changpeng Zhao, previous CEO of Binance, who urged traders to be wary of such practices.