Scammers drained over $300 million worth of cryptocurrency assets from EVM chains. More than 200,000 victims were affected by these schemes.
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According to security firm Scam Sniffer, phishing scams rose by 6.44% in the first half of 2024 compared to the entirety of 2023. Last year, $295 million was stolen, but that metric has been surpassed within the first six months of 2024.
Individual victims take massive hits
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Bad actors managed to affect 240,000 users across multiple EVM chains. In total, $314 million worth of cryptocurrency assets were lost, with March being the costliest month for the industry.
Reportedly, just 20 victims accounted for $58 million of these lost funds. Each of these victims lost over a whopping $1 million.
Among the top 20 victims, one lost over $11 million worth of aEthMKR and Pendle USDe tokens in June. This was the second-largest attack on an individual in the history of crypto.
In its post, Scam Sniffer pointed out that most of the top 20 victims lost their funds due to signing phishing signatures such as “Permit, IncreaseAllowance, and Uniswap Permit2.”
Pie chart of various phishing methods used by attackers. Source: Scam Sniffer.
Phishing attacks often involve tricking users into signing these malicious requests. Once signed, the attacker can manipulate the permissions to drain the victim’s funds.
Back in May, one Uniswap user lost over $150,000 to this attack after signing a Uniswap Permit2 network phishing signature.
Another key trend highlighted by Scam Sniffer indicated that the large attacks mostly targeted assets in “Staking, Restaking, Aave Collateral, and Pendle tokens.”
Deceptive tactics
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Per the blockchain security firm, Victims are mostly tricked using fake X accounts impersonating legitimate projects.
Scam Sniffer referred to a report from its parent company, SlowMist, in this regard. The report highlighted that approximately 80% of the first comments under popular crypto-project accounts were phishing links.
The posts are designed to promise lucrative opportunities for crypto users. When a user clicks this link, they are usually redirected to a phishing website and are then tricked into making seemingly legitimate transactions from their non-custodial wallets.
In the same report, SlowMist claimed to have frozen approximately $20.66 million in stolen funds across 13 platforms in the second quarter of 2024 alone.
Scam Sniffer urged users to remain vigilant. Further, it warned those looking to recover their stolen funds that any entity claiming to be able to recover 100% of stolen assets is a “scam.”
Funds lost to crypto hacks saw a slight drop in June 2024. As previously reported by Invezz, only $176 million was stolen last month, compared to the $385 million lost in May.
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