A group of scammers received more than $ 600,000 on air through the launching of spambots into the Slack channels of the open communities of the Etherium. According to an open address located in the Etherium block explorer, including Etherscan, the funds stolen by automatic spamming were already cashed. In the purse of scammers there are just over 3 ETH.
Almost immediately after receiving reports from victims of scammers who lost more than 3,000 ETH for three days, the Etherscan development team marked the address shown above as a suspicious account with a warning - "It was reported that this address was used for phishing. Do not send money here. " The victims, who lost the ether and coins of various ICOs (for example, Bancor) because of spamming in Slack, plan to file complaints with Interpol and other organizations to combat cybercrime in the hope of recovering their funds.
How did the theft happen?
According to the victims, fraudulent links were inserted in both private and public channels Slack. The links redirected users to a site whose design was identical to this ICO site. Using replicas of successful and popular ICO sites, hackers were able to apply spambots to Slack and steal funds sent to the ICO. One of the victims of fraud wrote on the Etherscan forum:
"Please return my 4.5 ETH and 1000 BANCOR. I am a student and I have serious financial problems. "
Some of the victims of the phishing attack laid the blame on Slack, who obviously is not responsible for the incident, for allowing spambots and phishing links to appear on the channels. However, fraudsters should be monitored by channel owners who invite or approve trusted accounts.
Importance of comprehensive verification
By itself, the ICO market has evolved into a bubble-like industry, with investors who are in a hurry to purchase coins of often completely useless blockbuster projects. More importantly, the vast majority of ICO projects that have attracted millions of dollars of funding have not even submitted alpha versions of the software, and many have only preliminary versions without active user bases and viable products.
Because of this trend in the ICO market, more and more blockbuster companies began to benefit from the insanity of crypto-currency investors, traders and enthusiasts. Projects on the block, which in fact did not need any ICO, began to organize a preliminary sale of coins, and developers began to greatly overestimate their projects and collect more money for their development than necessary.
It is imperative and important to conduct appropriate research, evaluation and analysis before investing in ICO. Important factors that should be paid attention are the long-term plan for the development of the project, the purpose of coins and the approximate date of launching the product. And, of course, you need to check the addresses of Bitcoin and Etherirum purses, as well as the addresses of ICO sites before sending funds - this will allow you not to become a victim of scammers.