Crypto Whale's Phishing Saga

Fraudsters rarely achieve success when attempting to deceive cryptocurrency whales who hold substantial assets with the power to influence the market. However, in an unfortunate turn of events, a cryptocurrency investor recently suffered significant financial losses, totaling several million dollars, as a result of the latest phishing scheme.

This incident is now recognized as one of the most significant crypto phishing attacks in recent memory.

According to data from blockchain transactions, a well-known crypto whale associated with the address "0x13e382" experienced a substantial setback on September 6, losing a staggering $24.23 million in Ethereum assets that were staked for liquidity. This loss encompassed 4,851 rETH tokens, equivalent to approximately $8.58 million, and 9,579 stETH tokens valued at $15.63 million. All of these assets ended up in the possession of the phishing scammers.

Upon conducting a more thorough investigation, the cybersecurity firm Web3 Scam Sniffer revealed that the whale inadvertently provided authorization for "increaseAllowance" transactions, granting the fraudsters access to the tokens.

Initially, the stolen funds were deposited into two specific addresses, namely "0x693b72" and "0x4c10a4." However, the scammers subsequently moved a portion of these assets to the Fixed Float exchange, while the remainder is now distributed across three separate addresses.

One of the wallets connected to this fraudulent activity, specifically "0x4c10a4," has been associated with multiple cryptocurrency phishing websites.

Although the identity of the victim remains undisclosed, it is worth noting that the earliest recorded transaction linked to this address dates back to June 2017, originating from the Bitfinex exchange.

These developments have emerged in the midst of an increasing number of cryptocurrency phishing scams, propagated by numerous verified paid bots on X (formerly known as Twitter), particularly following the launch of the new Twitter Blue subscription service last November.

Just last month, prominent blockchain investigator ZackXBT also drew attention to the concerning proliferation of phishing scam spam originating from counterfeit verified entities on the social media platform.