Address Poisoning Scams Cost Crypto Investors $1.6 Million in Days
Crypto users have lost more than $1.6 million to scammers using address poisoning attacks just this week — surpassing losses for the entire month of March.
On Friday alone, a victim mistakenly sent 140 ETH (about $636,500) to a scammer’s address after copying the wrong one from a contaminated transaction history, according to ScamSniffer, a crypto scam prevention platform. The victim’s transaction history had multiple poisoned addresses, making it only a matter of time before the trap worked.
Other victims suffered losses of $880,000, $80,000, and $62,000 through similar attacks. Cointelegraph’s compilation of cybersecurity reports confirms the surge in address poisoning scams this week.
What Is Address Poisoning?
Address poisoning tricks users by inserting fake wallet addresses that closely resemble legitimate ones into their transaction history. When users copy an address from this history, they unknowingly send funds to scammers.
Web3 Antivirus explains that scammers send small transactions from lookalike addresses to “poison” the transaction history. This makes the scam difficult to spot and easy to fall for.
Malicious Signature Scams Also Cost Victims Over $600K
Besides address poisoning, users lost at least $600,000 this week by signing harmful phishing signatures like “approve” or “permit,” according to ScamSniffer.
One victim lost $165,000 worth of tokens after approving malicious signatures.
Security experts recommend using an address book or whitelist and always verifying the full address before sending crypto. This simple step can prevent costly mistakes and keep your funds safe.
