Etherscan face aux hackers – For several months, a new type of attack has been multiplying in the ecosystem d’Ethereum. called address poisoning, it has wreaked havoc on investors. Faced with this threat, the Etherscan teams have made adjustments to their site to make it easier for users to read.
The Art of Poison: An Insidious Attack
Address poisoning is a phishing technique that targets users of Ethereum wallets. This one was revealed by the MetaMask teams last January.
In order to trap his victim, the hacker creates a fraud address that looks suspiciously like the victim’s address. Indeed, it shares the same first and last characters.
Once the address has been created, the hacker will send tokens to the victim’s address to ” poison ” wallet. THE recorded transactions in the portfolio history can then be accidentally selected by the user in future transfers.
The purpose of this maneuver is to deceive the user and push him tosend cryptocurrencytowards fraudulent address.
Although it is difficult to quantify the amount of damage, we have seen many victims of this type of attack on social networks since the beginning of the year.
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Etherscan implements security measures
Etherscanthe famous blockchain explorer of the Ethereum ecosystem, has announcement on April 10 several changes to its interface to deal with this type of attack .
“Update: Null value token transfers are now hidden by default. In recent times, “address poisoning” attacks have been used to phish unsuspecting users and send spam to everyone else. With this update, you won’t have to see these transfers anymore! »
Ainsi, Etherscan a disabled the display of zero value token transfers by default on its website. Users must now manually enable this option in Site Settings.
This measure was taken to deter address poisoning attacks and protect users from phishing and spam attempts. Indeed, by hiding these transfers Etherscan hopes to reduce the probability that a user inadvertently copies a poisoned address.
Caution is the mother of safety
Although this threat does not directly compromise users’ funds, it can cause losses if victims are not careful. To avoid falling into this trap, it is important to take precautions when sending cryptocurrencies.
As always, we remind you that the careful checking of each address character before proceeding to one transactionis essential.
Faced with this type of attack, simply checking the first and last characters is not enough to protect yourself.
In addition, some platforms offer address book features, where users can add frequently used addresses. This ensures that addresses are verified and reduces the risk of sending funds to a fraudulent address.
Phishing attacks are among the most widespread in the crypto ecosystem. These have different targets, but the goal is always the same: to attack your assets. At the end of March, the protocolArbitrum suffered a Discord hack following which the hacker carried out a phishing attack.
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