Exploiter Steals $68M Worth of Crypto Through Address Poisoning
The victim was duped by a mimicked 0.05 ether transfer.
- A user unintentionally sent 1,155 wrapped bitcoin to an exploiter's wallet after being targeted by address poisoning.
- The scam has been confirmed by various blockchain security firms.
A cryptocurrency user has lost $68 million worth of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) after falling victim to an address poisoning exploit, according to blockchain security firm CertiK.
Address poisoning is a technique that involves tricking the victim into sending a legitimate transaction to the wrong wallet address by mimicking the first and last six characters of the true wallet address and depending on the sender to miss the discrepancy in the intervening characters. Wallet addresses can be as long as 42 characters.
In this case, the exploiter mimicked a 0.05 ether (ETH) transaction before receiving 1,155 WBTC from the victim.
Security platform Cyvers and blockchain sleuth ZachXBT confirmed that $68 million had been lost to an address poisoning scam.
Crypto investors lost $2 billion to hacks, scams and exploits across decentralized finance (DeFi) in 2023 and an additional $333 million was stolen in the first quarter.
Oliver Knight
Oliver Knight joined CoinDesk as a news reporter in April 2022. Before joining CoinDesk, Knight was the Chief Reporter at Coin Rivet for three years. Having graduated with a journalism degree from Birmingham City University, Knight went on to work at various sports publications before diving into the world of Bitcoin in 2014. He does not have any crypto holdings.