Unsuspecting crypto customers misplaced greater than $1.6 million to scammers by way of deal with poisoning assaults simply this week — a determine that beats all the month of March.
A sufferer misplaced 140 Ether (ETH), value round $636,500, on Friday after copying the incorrect deal with from a contaminated switch historical past, reported crypto rip-off prevention platform ScamSniffer.
“The consumer mainly despatched 140 ETH to a lookalike deal with that had been seeded within the historical past after a copy-paste mistake,” stated the workforce, who added, “his historical past is stuffed with poison deal with assaults, so it was solely a matter of time earlier than the lure labored.”
One other sufferer misplaced $880,000 value of crypto to handle poisoning on Sunday, whereas different alerts present a crypto consumer misplaced $80,000, and one other misplaced $62,000 on Wednesday to scammers.
Compiling the alerts from cybersecurity corporations, Cointelegraph has discovered that greater than $1.6 million was misplaced to scammers by way of the tactic since Sunday, greater than all the month of March, which noticed $1.2 million misplaced to handle poisoning.
🚨 Nearly one million is misplaced to an deal with poisoning rip-off.@web3_antivirus detected a stay deal with poisoning scheme that drained about $880K in USDT. One pockets had its historical past poisoned, and the identical proprietor seemingly retried a caught switch from three extra wallets, every sending… pic.twitter.com/N8IHy7MkIs
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) August 12, 2025
Handle poisoning depends on mimicking addresses
Handle poisoning entails sending small transactions from pockets addresses that resemble reliable ones, duping customers into copying the incorrect deal with when making future transactions.
“Poisoners ship small transfers from addresses that mimic an actual one, so copying from historical past turns into a lure,” defined Web3 Antivirus, a agency providing blockchain safety options.
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This results in “transaction historical past poisoning,” the place the scammer sends a faux switch with an identical deal with, showing within the sufferer’s transaction historical past. The sufferer copies the phony deal with and sends funds to the scammer, defined ScamSniffer on Friday.
Malicious signature signing
Along with the million-dollar deal with poisoning thefts, at the least $600,000 was misplaced this week from victims who signed malicious phishing signatures akin to “approve,” “increaseAllowance,” and “allow” signatures, in response to ScamSniffer.
On Tuesday, a sufferer misplaced $165,000 value of BLOCK and DOLO tokens after signing malicious signatures, reported ScamSniffer.
“We sound like like a damaged file, nevertheless it’s value mentioning once more: use an deal with guide or whitelist and confirm the FULL deal with,” earlier than sending, ScamSniffer wrote.
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