Synopsis: A victim targeted in a sophisticated crypto heist attack, managed to recover a staggering $71 million worth of stolen cryptocurrency after falling prey to a technique known as address poisoning.
In the crypto world, a digital heist took an expected turn after the victim recovered the stolen funds of $71 Million from the wrong digital address. This incident is widely known as address poisoning in crypto exchanges where the buying and selling of crypto tokens occurs daily.
The theft occurred due to address poisoning or in crypto jargon, a dusting attack. It is done by sending crypto tokens from a wallet that closely resembles the victim’s address, a wallet of high net worth.
Crypto Heist: How Does Address Poisoning Work?
The victim fell prey to the trap that can happen to any of us, ‘human error’. The Address Poising scam works by sending crypto tokens from an identical wallet that closely resembles the victim’s address. The high-asset individual is goated in believing the spam wallet is their own by sending tokens repeatedly so they get confused about their personal wallet address as the spam wallet address.
Once the victim carelessly copies and pastes a wallet address from one of these spam transactions, a transfer of millions of dollars occurs into the attacker’s hands, thus completing the crypto heist.
Crypto Heist on the decline Since April 2024
The recovery of funds can be attributed to Match Systems’ CEO, Andrei Kutin, and Cryptex, with the recovered funds currently amounting to approximately $66.8 million in U.S. dollars. The victim initially attempted to contact the attacker, even offering an incentive of a 10% bounty.
According to Blockchain messaging data, there was no response by the hacker until two days ago. The upturn chain of events can be attributed to the tightening of the noose of cyber criminals like Mango Market hacker Abraham Eisenberg:
The first quarter of this year has seen $336 million lost to Web3 hackers and fraud, a 23% decrease compared to the first quarter of 2023. According to online data April recorded the lowest amount of funds lost to scams since March 2021.
Crypto Heist Recovery a Bright Future Ahead for Crypto?
An amount of $73,885,000 has been recovered from stolen Web3 capital in 7 specific situations since 2021. The recovery of stolen crypto tokens since the last three years has built trust amongst crypto users throughout the globe.
The victim currently has no complaints against the attacker, a testament to fear amongst cyber criminals targeting crypto exchanges.
Crypto markets nevertheless are always embroiled in ups and downs of prices. This recovery sends the right signals throughout the different crypto communities everywhere.
