Scammers Target Awakened Ethereum Wallet Right After Test Transfer

An 'awakened' Ethereum wallet, created in 2015, transferred cryptocurrency worth approximately $4.6 million for the first time in 11 years. Immediately after the test transaction, it was attacked by fraudsters, but their attempts were unsuccessful.

The wallet received its first 1400 ETH in July 2015 in the first (genesis) block of Ethereum. In March 2016, it received another 755 ETH. Since then, the owner had not sent any coins.

On the night of November 10, it started with a test transfer of 0.05 ETH. Just a minute later, fraudsters began sending small amounts to its address from specially generated addresses, where the first and last characters matched the recipient's address. This is how address poisoning works: the attackers hope the user will copy the address from the transaction history and mistakenly send funds to their wallet.

In the Etherscan explorer, it is visible that after the test transaction, dozens of transfers were made to the wallet from addresses that began and ended with the same characters as the address to which the test tokens were sent. The coin owner might have mistaken the fraudulent addresses for the one to which they previously sent funds, accidentally copied it, and transferred money to the attackers.

The scheme did not work. Thirty-eight minutes after the test transfer, the owner sent 2154.94 ETH (about $4.6 million at the time of transfer) to the correct address. In May 2024, an unknown cryptocurrency owner fell victim to such a spam attack, losing $68 million due to inattention.