$55 million DAI gone in a click, crypto whale loses fortune to phishing scam

A crypto whale lost more than $55 million in DAI on Tuesday after signing an unverified transaction. This latest cautionary tale has reminded crypto holders of the dangers in the digital assets industry. 

In an earlier Chainalysis report, the on-chain data monitoring firm suggested more than $2.7 billion worth of funds have been lost to approval phishing attacks since May 2021. This figure highlights that approval phishing is a much bigger problem than previously known. Users can avoid these issues by double-checking every transaction they sign.

Scammers withdrew $55M of DAI from the wallet

As per the details shared by Lookonchain, a crypto wallet owner unknowingly signed a transaction that handed over control of 55.47 million DAI in Maker to a phishing address. The attackers instantly took advantage of the situation and drained the whale’s stablecoins from the DeFi protocol Maker.

It mentioned that the theft happened as the attacker gained access to EOA. The whale later attempted to withdraw funds but it was too late as the ownership had already been transferred, and the withdrawal failed. The attackers gained complete control of the wallet.

Lookonchain tracked the attackers’ wallet addresses and found out that the scammers swapped 27.5 million for 10,625 Ether. However, it also issued an advisory to always double-check before clicking “confirm” and not to sign unknown transactions to prevent such cases.

Scammers continue to target crypto holders  

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) took steps to curb more than 7,300 scam websites targeting investors over the last year. These sites were promoting fake trading platforms and crypto investments via social media. Some of these sites were using false celebrity endorsements.

Cryptopolitan also reported that around 20 scam sites are taken down on a daily average. Most of them are fake investment platforms (5,530), while phishing scams account for 1,065 takedowns, and crypto investment scams account for 615.

London-based Netcraft is helping ASIC by shutting down these sites within hours of being reported. With connections to domain providers worldwide, it was able to track down and take down sites used by the same scammers.

Crypto holders often hold stablecoins to avoid the volatility of the digital assets market. DAI is the third-largest stablecoin among digital assets with a market capitalization of over $5.3 billion. Its 24-hour trading volume stood at around $89 million. The cumulative stablecoins market cap is at $176 billion and growing. Tether’s USDT is the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin with a circulating supply of a massive 117.29 billion.