8 cryptocurrency scams that are popular on Twitter right now

Recently, a security expert has published a list of 8 cryptocurrency scams that are currently common among scammers on Twitter and continue to take victims.

To Report Cointelegraph, on August 21 (30 August), a cyber security analyst named Serpent published this list in a 19-part tweet. This analyst, who has 253,400 followers on Twitter, is the founder of Sentinel Security System.

According to Serpent, fraudsters target inexperienced cryptocurrency users using fake websites, fake addresses, fake user accounts, verified accounts that have actually been hacked, introducing fake projects and airdrops, and sending various malware.

Amidst the recent spate of scams related to this area, phishing and hacking of digital currency protocols are more worrisome than other methods. Serpent explains that hackers are using a new scam to target people who have recently lost money in high-profile hacks by promising “stolen cryptocurrency recovery.”

He says:

Simply put, they try to target people who have already been scammed or hacked and claim that they can recover their funds.

According to Serpent, these scammers claim to be blockchain developers and target users who have been victims of recent hacks or major exploits. They ask these people to pay a fee to execute a smart contract that can recover their stolen funds; But finally they run away after receiving the money.

This fraud method has been used after the hacking of about 8 million dollars of Phantom Solana’s wallets at the beginning of this month (August). Afterwards, Heidi Chakos, host of the Crypto Tips YouTube channel, warned users to beware of scammers offering solutions to recover hacked assets.

Another strategy of fraudsters is exploiting users’ sensitivity to security holes or exploits. According to the analyst, scammers have been tricking users into visiting a phishing website for some time by using a fake “revoke.rip” address attributed to the “Revoke.Cash” site. In this scam, people are shown a warning that their digital currencies are at risk, and then, by creating a sense of urgency, they are forced to click on malicious links.

using Unicode characters (Unicode Letters) is another common scam method on Twitter. In this method, fraudsters replace the letters of a legitimate site’s URL with Unicode equivalents, so that the phishing URL looks like a real URL. In another way, they are a Verified Twitter account hacked and then by changing the name, they use that account for impersonation. These fake accounts encourage people to participate in airdrops or mint tokens for fake projects.

Another method is aimed at users who are looking for schemes to make a lot of money in the short term. This method, which sends spam messages through bots, is often referred to as the “Uniswap Front Running” scam. The message asks users to watch a video on how to earn $1,400 a day, but instead tricks them into sending their winnings to the scammers’ wallets.

Another common method of fraud on Twitter with the name Honeypot account (Honeypot Account) is known. In this method, fraudsters ask people to help them transfer their holdings, which is a significant amount of Tether, and intentionally give them their wallet’s private key. Upon entering this wallet, the deceived user realizes that there is no required fee (Tron) for transferring these tethers, and immediately after depositing the fee, a robot transfers the transaction fee from the wallet to the fraudster’s address. .

Commissioning fake work to NFT artists or asking NFT collectors to test an early version of a project or game for the purpose of monetization (P2E) is another tactic of fraudsters. In both cases, these requests are just an excuse to send malicious files that can copy browser cookies, passwords, and add-on data.

A report published by Chainalysis last week shows that the total revenue of digital currency scams has reached $1.6 billion from the beginning of 2022 (D1400) until today. This figure has decreased by 65% ​​compared to the 4.6 billion dollar income of frauds in this field last year. According to this report, the most important reason for this is the decrease in the price of digital currencies and the withdrawal of inexperienced users from the market.