MetaMask Warns A New Scam Called Address Poisoning

Key Points:

• MetaMask team warns unsuspecting users of a growing type of scam called “address poisoning”.
• Address poisoning is aimed at cryptocurrency users who simply copy and paste addresses into their transaction history without doing a necessary double-check.

According to MetaMask, a new type of wallet address fraud that targets sloppy copy pasters is on the rise. The MetaMask team took efforts yesterday to alert unknowing users of a rising sort of fraud known as “address poisoning.”

Scammers exploit the first and final four alpha-numerical combinations of a wallet address to generate a bogus new address. The newly formed fake address then sends a $0 transaction to replace the matching stored address in your transaction history. Address poisoning is aimed at cryptocurrency users who mindlessly copy and paste addresses into their transaction history without doing a necessary double-check.

The security upgrade, on the other hand, was met with discontent by a segment of the crypto community, who think the world’s largest crypto wallet provider acted too slowly to bring it to public attention.

Additionally, Tuzun (0xTuzun), a Twitter user who had tweeted a public warning about the event as early as December 2nd, 2022, provided more information on the nature of the assault and the number of wallets impacted.

According to Tuzun, over 340,000 addresses have been poisoned since December 2022, stealing roughly $1.64 million USD from the wallets of unwary victims. According to the data, the entire cost of the assaults was slightly more than $25,000, indicating a profit margin of more than 6,000%.

Tuzun utilized the on-chain monitoring tool Xplore to trace down some suspected perpetrators, and he also suggested that MetaMask improve its UI features to let users identify wallet addresses in transaction history using colour markers. Before sending funds, users were also encouraged to double-check the alpha-numerical composition of wallet addresses beyond the first four digits.

The poison address fraud adds to the increasing list of crypto sector scams that resulted in a total loss of more than $3.5 billion last year.

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