On Monday, a scam victim identified as Still in the Game posted on X that his wallet was drained of over 95 million GIGA tokens worth about $6 million from clicking a phishing link. The scammer sold the stolen cryptos, leading the GIGA token to dump by more than 80% in less than five minutes.
Just want to be transparent – the massive sell on $GIGA today was due to one of my wallets being drained by a fake zoom link
This hurts bad but I will be back. I will always stay in the game
Please be careful out there and never click any links from those you don’t know…
— Still in the Game (@stigstigstig_) November 11, 2024
How It Happened
According to the victim, he clicked a fake Zoom meeting link, which redirected him to a scammer site. The phony website installed malware on his laptop, giving the scammer access to sensitive information.
Providing further insight into the incident, on-chain security and investigation firm Scam Sniffer noted that the Zoom phishing link is a new trap.
Comparing the links, us02web.zoom[.]us is the legitimate link for Zoom meetings, while us04-zoom[.]us is the scammer’s link. Therefore, every internet user should carefully note the difference in the URLs to avoid falling victim to such a trap.
The Sniffer team also revealed that clicking the link automatically installs malware on the user’s device. This malware immediately scans the device for wallet data, collects private keys and passwords, steals sensitive information, and transfers the accumulated data to the hacker.
Hacker Moves Funds
According to a crypto analytic firm, Onchain Lens, the scammer didn’t delay moving the stolen funds. First, he sold his realized 95.27 million $GIGA for 11,759 Sol valued at $2.1 million.
Thereafter, he converted the Sol to USDT and USDC and moved them to another address. As of the time of writing, the scammer’s last transaction was a 700 Sol transfer to the KuCoin exchange.
Notably, Onchain Lens identified the scammer’s addresses in its tweet.
Crypto Scams Skyrocket
While crypto and blockchain technology promote transaction transparency, scammers have devised various means to steal funds from investors, firms, and traders.
In a recent incident, DeFi protocol, DeltaPrime suffered a system exploit, which affected its Arbitrium and Avalanche tokens, leading to a loss of about $4.5 million.
Meanwhile, in September, the crypto market lost about $120 million in over 20 hacks, ranking as the second-best month with the fewest hacks.
