What Is Phishing in Cryptocurrency?

Phishing has been a common occurrence in technologies where multitudes of people who are used to transact business over the phone or computers have been cheated by fraudulent operators. Many of us thought that at least the new technology of web 3 is far more secure and immune from such attacks but, unfortunately, that is not the case. Phishing scams have really caught up in cryptocurrencies, too.

So, what happens in a cryptocurrency phishing scam? As in other cases where victims are asked to divulge their OTP, here, the victims are duped into divulging their private keys or personal information. To acquire the victim’s trust, the attacker frequently poses as a trustworthy organization or person. The attacker uses the victim’s details to steal their bitcoin funds after the victim has been deceived.

This kind of phishing fraud targets several wallets, cryptocurrency exchanges, and initial coin offerings.

An attacker will typically start a phishing assault by sending a mass email or text message to potential victims. Frequently, it will appear to be coming from a reliable source, like a wallet or bitcoin exchange.

Wormhole, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, suffered a $320 million loss as a result of a cyberattack in February 2022. In addition to this attack, a report by the Federal Trade Commission claims that cryptocurrency scammers have taken more than $1 billion since 2021.

The message almost always contains a link that leads to a fake website that looks identical to the real one. Once the victim clicks on the link and enters their login information, the attacker uses it to access their account.