Up to 8 subtle crypto scams currently on Twitter
By: Ikenna Odunze
August 22, 2022 10:17 AM
Spelt out by a 19-part thread are efficient and complex strategies used by scammers to take funds away from crypto users.
Serpent, a cybersecurity analyst has made known his selections for the most dishonourable crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) scams active on Twitter right now.
He is the founder of Sentinel, a crypto threat mitigation system with artificial intelligence and community support. has 253,400 Twitter followers as well.
In a 19-part thread published on August 21st, Serpent explained how scammers target trusting cryptocurrency consumers by employing cloned websites, phony airdrops, projects, accounts, hacked verified accounts, URLs, and a ton of malware.
One of the trickier tactics used in the latest wave of phishing attacks and crypto protocol compromises. According to Serpent, bad actors use the Crypto Recovery Scam to trick those who have recently lost money as a result of a widespread hack, saying:
"Simply put, they try to defraud victims who have already fallen for scams and say they can get their money back."
He, Serpent, claimed that these con artists pose as Blockchain developers and contact those who have just been the target of a significant attack, asking them to pay a charge to deploy a smart contract that would help them recover their lost assets. They "take the fee and run" instead.
The multimillion-dollar exploit that attacked Solana wallets earlier last month was actually spotted in use after that. Having Heidi Chakos, the host of the YouTube channel Crypto Tips, caution commuters to be wary of con artists that promise to fix the attack.
Recent exploits encompass a number of various strategies. The Fake Revoke Cash Scam, according to the analyst, tricks users into visiting a phishing website by warning them that their cryptocurrency assets may be at risk and exploiting a number of users who were tricked into clicking the malicious link by using the word "emergency."
Another strategy has the scammers hack a verified Twitter account, rename it and use it to impersonate someone of influence to endorse fake airdrops. Also, another strategy makes use of Unicode Letters to create a phishing URL appear almost exactly like a genuine one, yet interchanging one of the letters with a Unicode lookalike.
Another strategy is identified as a Honeypot Account, in which users are supposedly leaked a private key to get access to a funded wallet, but in attempt by them to send crypto in order to fund the coins transfer, they are sent right away to the scammer's wallets via a bot.
The rest of the scams aim at users wanting to get onboard with a get-rich-quick scheme. This includes the Front Running Scam of Uniswap, mostly seen as spam bots messages informing users to view a video on how to "make $1,400/DAY front-running Uniswap", which in turn deceives them into transferring their funds to a scammer's wallet.
Other tactics involve asking highly placed NFT collectors to “beta test” a new play-to-earn (P2E) game or project or commissioning fake work to NFT artists. But, in either cases, it is merely an excuse to send them harmful files that can scrape browser cookies, extension data and passwords.
Chainalysis stated in a report last week, that revenue from scams in crypto fell 65% in 2022 thus far, owing to falling prices of asset and the exit of crypto users, lacking experience, from the market. Total crypto scam revenue year-to-date is currently sitting at $1.6 billion, down from roughly $4.6 billion in the prior year.