Crypto: Address Poisoning Recently Cost 2 Victims Over $62m Alone: Scam...

Analysts have warned that Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade has made address poisoning cheaper, as malicious actors can carry out dust attacks for very little cost.

Just one victim lost $12.2 million in January by copying the wrong address from their transaction history in an “address poisoning attack,” adding to a similar $50 million attack in December, according to Scam Sniffer.

Address poisoning is when attackers send small transactions, or “dust,” from addresses that look similar to those in the target’s transaction history, hoping the victim will copy the wrong address.

Scam Sniffer added that signature phishing also surged recently, with $6.27 million stolen from 4,741 victims in January, a 207% increase compared to December.

Two wallets accounted for 65% of all signature phishing losses.

Signature phishing is slightly different as it tricks users into signing malicious blockchain transactions, such as unlimited token approvals.

“Address poisoning is one of the most consistent ways large amounts of crypto get lost,” reported security firm Web3 Antivirus on Thursday.

Some of the largest address-poisoning losses it tracked over time ranged from $4 million to $126 million. “Recent incidents show this trend isn’t slowing down,” they stated.

Related: Stablecoin ‘dust’ txs on Ethereum triple post-Fusaka: Coin Metrics

The researchers explained that address poisoners “generate full addresses that match the same first/last few characters you see, but the middle is different, so it looks ‘identical.’”

Source: CoinTelegraph