Fraudsters “made” over a million dollars from a fake ApeCoin giveaway. How did they do it?
In mid-March, the distribution of ApeCoin (APE) tokens to NFT holders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection began. The event attracted a lot of attention in the digital asset industry, but it was also the premise for a new fraudulent scheme. The previous day, attackers managed to steal at least a million dollars in cryptocurrency through a phishing attack. We tell you more about it.
How is cryptocurrency stolen?
The victims of the attack were mostly Twitter users with BAYC avatars. The principle of the scam is simple and common – a fake airdrop, i.e. supposedly a coin giveaway. Under the guise of a free token giveaway, a malicious link was promoted with the following quote.
The launch of ApeCoin was a great success! We collectively decided to release some more coins for active NFT traders/holders. If you don’t currently own NFT, you can get it for just 0.33 ETH!
Fraudulent mailing from the bhawana.eth account
According to Decrypt’s sources, the link led to a confirmation request for a malicious transaction from the victim’s wallet. As soon as the latter signed the transaction, all NFTs were automatically deducted from their address. A cryptocurrency enthusiast under the nickname Bored Alien Silver Ape suffered the most damage from the phishing attack. He lost more than $500,000 in unique tokens.
The victim immediately blamed the Twitter account bhawana.eth, which previously belonged to the former CEO of a cricket association in Nepal. As of now, all tweets from the account have been deleted. It has most likely been hacked by fraudsters to instil more trust in the victims, as the account has a blue Twitter identity verification tick.
Bored Alien Silver Ape tweet with accusations
Another victim was someone named aarontc.eth: he lost 34 ETH, although he himself later claimed that he didn’t even connect his wallet to the malicious link request. It looks like the fraudsters only needed to click on the link itself. Although exactly how this was implemented is unknown.
aarontc.eth also shared its story on Twitter
Most interestingly, the host of a podcast called NFT 365 under the nickname Fanzo fell for the trick. He has worked with the US Department of Defense for over a dozen years on cybersecurity issues, but even his vast experience didn't keep him from making such an embarrassing mistake.
It turns out Fanzo didn’t even click on the malicious link
The topic of coin availability for various crypto investors had caught the interest of Whale Stats analysts the day before. They provided detailed data on the “whales” in the Etherium network – the top 100 richest crypto-enthusiasts and organisations.
What are the big cryptocurrency investors buying?
According to CryptoPotato sources, almost 19 per cent of all tokens on the top 100 whale wallets are FTT, the native token of the FTX exchange. It has about $1.7 billion in investments. Shiba Inu (SHIB) is second with 14.15 per cent and $1.27 billion respectively.
Distribution of the most popular whale tokens
That said, one of the big holders of Etherium recently spent around $89 million on SHIB in a single transaction. Apart from the lesser-known tokens, which account for 7.5 per cent of Whale’s investment portfolios, other preferred cryptocurrencies include the two most popular staplecoins, USDC and USDT, as well as MATIC, MANA, Chainlink and so on.
Among the aforementioned addresses may be wallets belonging to RF residents. However, they are unlikely to circumvent recent economic sanctions. The fact is that the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has reiterated the warning that Russian individuals and entities are trying to use cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions.
Cryptocurrency trading volume in roubles
However, as of March 18, the daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies in rubles was only $7.4 million, significantly below the peak of $70 million reached on March 7. This amount represents only a small fraction of the total crypto market volume, Cointelegraph reported. As a reminder, Bitcoin’s daily trading volume typically ranges between $20 billion and $40 billion.
We think the scam has proven to be fairly straightforward, but effective. Apparently, the key role in it was indeed played by the presence of a confirmation tick in the respective Twitter account. Because of it, the victims of the fraud scheme apparently decided not to even examine other tweets in the account. Hopefully, this story will be another reminder that cryptocurrency owners should not click on unfamiliar links, let alone conduct transactions there.
Look for more useful information in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. We’ll talk about other interesting blockchain-related topics there as well.
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