Image: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Interestingly, the scammer appears to have added their own liquidity to the token to make it look like it’s worth something when the victim attempts to swap it on a decentralized exchange like Uniswap. According to Shegenerates, attempts to swap the tokens have resulted in failed transactions, which are posted to the blockchain forever and may indicate to scammers which victims are willing to interact with tokens of unknown provenance for a quick profit. It would also mean that the scammer would reap a fee reward in the event of a successful swap. It’s unclear how many people have been targeted, or have actually fallen for this scam. Jonathan Levin, the co-founder of blockchain monitoring firm Chainalysis, said that this kind of scam “is gonna be something hard to combat.”In her tweets, Shegenerates warned people to never interact with tokens or smart contracts that get sent out of the blue, and to never go to custom websites that are specific to a token.“If a token name has a domain name in it, that is a big red flag not to go to that website and get phished,” she wrote. Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast, CYBER. Subscribe to our new Twitch channel.Do you have any information about any hacks or scams against cryptocurrency owners or companies? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, Wickr/Telegram/Wire @lorenzofb, or email lorenzofb@vice.com