A Whale Loses 55 Million DAI in a Phishing Scam

[Vision pro]

There are still 22 million DAI that have not been withdrawn and since DAI is decentralized it is difficult to freeze it so I wonder how a whale would have the technical knowledge to buy DAI and not learn the basics of avoiding phishing links. Generally it would be difficult for a new hacker to launder 10,625 Ether (ETH) without being noticed.


Or in other words, there may be an entity or organization behind such hacking.

It's indeed surprising that someone with the technical knowledge to accumulate such a large amount of DAI or ETH might still fall victim to phishing attacks. However, the nature of phishing exploits relies heavily on social engineering, which can deceive even experienced users if executed well. The attacker might have created a very convincing phishing scenario that bypassed the user's defenses.

[LogitechMouse]

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In the first half of 2024, phishing attacks caused nearly half a billion dollars in losses.

This is the one that got me. Just imagine how much these scammers are getting to these innocent asset holders. If the same happens for the 2nd half the year, they will be getting more or less a billion dollars for just one year. This is the reason why I always say that the scammers are becoming more and more knowledgeable with how they scam other investors. On the other hand, investors are becoming dumber and dumber especially on how they secure their assets.

One thing for sure, even whales can be victims of evil people just lurking around and looking for some good opportunity to make their punch and victimize others...to the tune of 55 million dollar worth of a stablecoin. Well, if you are one of the whales or at least hodling some sizeable amount of crypto in your wallet, you must be careful and think thrice before you do anything in your wallet. Such can be the big danger if you are just a prawn in the pond...you can be targeted with people whose only job - and this has become a very lucrative job - is to get you under their radar and control your digital assets away. If you were this whale, what are the things that you could have done to avoid losing this huge amount?

Having a lot of money doesn't mean that you have a lot of knowledge and we saw it here on this recent phishing attack.

It's quite unfortunate, but that's just how it is. In a world where we are the one responsible with our assets, things like these are becoming a norm already and there's no other way for us to stop them aside from the fact that we need to continue to educate these investors especially those newbies on how they need to secure their assets because like you said, scammers are just lurking everywhere, waiting for the perfect opportunity to scam newbie investors.

This attack is  for sure unfortunate, but I've seen many already and it already came to a point where I will just say "It is what it is." and the scammers will just say "Thank you. Next."

[Hamza2424]

One thing for sure, even whales can be victims of evil people just lurking around and looking for some good opportunity to make their punch and victimize others...to the tune of 55 million dollar worth of a stablecoin. Well, if you are one of the whales or at least hodling some sizeable amount of crypto in your wallet, you must be careful and think thrice before you do anything in your wallet. Such can be the big danger if you are just a prawn in the pond...you can be targeted with people whose only job - and this has become a very lucrative job - is to get you under their radar and control your digital assets away. If you were this whale, what are the things that you could have done to avoid losing this huge amount?

It happens sometimes whales also become the prey but this time it was a big one and I am pretty sure the hunter would be very happy if he did not get caught I am sorry for the prey lost but why did he sign a transaction without knowing the source. This is so dumb and looks like he does not even deserve to have this much money but the nature of the world is always unpredictable because smart ones have no money while the dumb ones are making a lot haha.

Anyway I hope his funds will be tracked by the professionals and he could get them back because losing that much money to a scammer is the biggest mistake that no one want to do even by mistake haha.

[B.Trader]

This incident highlights the growing threat of phishing attacks in the cryptocurrency space, where attackers use deception to gain control of users' digital assets. The loss of 55.47 million Dai DAI underscores the importance of vigilance when interacting with blockchain networks.In this case, the attacker exploited the victim's mistake of signing an unverified transaction, allowing them to change the wallet’s ownership and drain the funds. Despite the user's attempt to recover the assets, the transaction failed as the ownership had already been transferred to the attacker's address.

[TryNinja]

This is the one that got me. Just imagine how much these scammers are getting to these innocent asset holders. If the same happens for the 2nd half the year, they will be getting more or less a billion dollars for just one year. This is the reason why I always say that the scammers are becoming more and more knowledgeable with how they scam other investors. On the other hand, investors are becoming dumber and dumber especially on how they secure their assets.

To be fair, when people lose all they have they tend to just leave the ecossystem. I feel like most people who are easily scammable have already lost what they have and now it's getting harder to get new victims as it was in the beginning. Not saying scammers will be gone, since it's still very profitable to scam people (sadly), but a few extra billions I'm not sure.

[Lucius]

To be fair, when people lose all they have they tend to just leave the ecossystem. I feel like most people who are easily scammable have already lost what they have and now it's getting harder to get new victims as it was in the beginning. Not saying scammers will be gone, since it's still very profitable to scam people (sadly), but a few extra billions I'm not sure.

I think that the "glitter" of the altcoins market attracts millions of new people all over the world who dream of overnight success, and there is certainly much more than just millions of dollars hidden there. These are people (not all, but most) who are very inexperienced and susceptible to deception, and as such they are ideal targets for scams.

When we say "scam", we should not only mean a classic scam in which someone steals something from someone, but that a lot of people will lose their money just because they will invest it in something that seems like a legitimate project, but in fact it is not.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

One thing for sure, even whales can be victims of evil people just lurking around and looking for some good opportunity to make their punch and victimize others...

I agree with you mate, one thing for sure is that no investor in the crypto space is above scammers attack. Whales are even the top priority of scammers because they would be so happy if they hijack a big bag of any whale that fall victim to them just like the case you talked about now.

Every crypto investor or Bitcoin holder have to be extremely careful and handle the security of their asset with top priority to avoid being victim to scammers.

[bhadz]

That's pain in the ass, losing that amount and it could be the victim's life savings in crypto. Phishing is still common and hackers doesn't really need to reinvent their techniques. Those that have a lot of holdings need to be aware of any attack can happen whether it's phishing or not. Protect your assets and be careful to the transactions that you sign with these smart contracts or any website that you visit, always verify things for your own sake.

[Rubel007]

That's pain in the ass, losing that amount and it could be the victim's life savings in crypto. Phishing is still common and hackers doesn't really need to reinvent their techniques. Those that have a lot of holdings need to be aware of any attack can happen whether it's phishing or not. Protect your assets and be careful to the transactions that you sign with these smart contracts or any website that you visit, always verify things for your own sake.

Phishing attacks are nothing new to a hacker, but as a victim I find them suicidal. To escape from this situation, the holder has no choice but to take precautions. It is important to be careful in every case, especially those with high assets. Necessary measures must be taken to ensure the security of the device on which the held assets reside. I wouldn't use that device for anything else except transection. I will try to use separate devices for personal work in order to maintain maximum security in protecting my assets.

[MrSpasybo]

Phishing attacks are nothing new to a hacker, but as a victim I find them suicidal. To escape from this situation, the holder has no choice but to take precautions. It is important to be careful in every case, especially those with high assets. Necessary measures must be taken to ensure the security of the device on which the held assets reside. I wouldn't use that device for anything else except transection. I will try to use separate devices for personal work in order to maintain maximum security in protecting my assets.

Yeah, I also don't understand why a whale with over $50M in assets could be so careless. If I had that much crypto, I'd store it in multiple cold wallets and only use a few hot wallets when interacting with DeFi, while carefully verifying the protocols before signing any proposals.

Many investors have faced similar risks when participating in new projects and granting permission to fraudulent protocols, resulting in their account assets being stolen in just a few seconds. I hope this event will serve as a warning to all of us before the bullrun. At the same time, this could also be the reason why many investors prefer to use CEXs instead of self-custodying their crypto assets.

[Gurujebs]

That's pain in the ass, losing that amount and it could be the victim's life savings in crypto. Phishing is still common and hackers doesn't really need to reinvent their techniques. Those that have a lot of holdings need to be aware of any attack can happen whether it's phishing or not. Protect your assets and be careful to the transactions that you sign with these smart contracts or any website that you visit, always verify things for your own sake.

A whale can be any person and not everyone is very good in security maximalism and it's something anyone should invest in because if you can splash millions of dollars into an investment, then it's shouldn't be a hard work to pay to learn about tight security. Things like wallet and some of the things can make you lose everything should be studied.

I think this shouldn't be a problem in the first place if Dai community can help. If indeed he can signed a message and prove ownership of the address and provide prove of buying wallet, then a vote can be pass to render that useless but it's only possible if the community vote in favour of that and that undermine the decentralization of Dai foundation.

[_act_]

This keep me wondering how this kind of mistake could have happened to a whale, the amount in consideration here is much and as we already know that crypto transactions are irreversible, ones sent and confirmed, that settles it all, i rarely see that a whale will fall into the hands of scammers when he knows what took him to be where he was, there is no need of relenting efforts in what we do.

[bitterguy28]

This keep me wondering how this kind of mistake could have happened to a whale, the amount in consideration here is much and as we already know that crypto transactions are irreversible, ones sent and confirmed, that settles it all, i rarely see that a whale will fall into the hands of scammers when he knows what took him to be where he was, there is no need of relenting efforts in what we do.

the only reason i can think of is that this whale was just influenced and not really an expert when it comes to these things it is not uncommon for the rich to have financial advisors which basically just tell them what to do not all rich are very careful and smart it is unfortunate for him but i hope that teaches him a lesson

[Faisal2202]

It happens sometimes whales also become the prey but this time it was a big one and I am pretty sure the hunter would be very happy if he did not get caught I am sorry for the prey lost but why did he sign a transaction without knowing the source. This is so dumb and looks like he does not even deserve to have this much money but the nature of the world is always unpredictable because smart ones have no money while the dumb ones are making a lot haha.

Anyway I hope his funds will be tracked by the professionals and he could get them back because losing that much money to a scammer is the biggest mistake that no one want to do even by mistake haha.

Well this dumb one did not make money but lost a big amount. You are right, 55 million DAI is not a small amount, it's so big, and the mistake was so childish too, like newbies make such mistakes and they don't lose in millions because newbies also don't take risks with millions of dollars and attach their wallets to any site they found.

I also wish the funds would be tracked back and but I did not find any updates on this event. I hope no one else will lose this much money. I have read this thread a lot of times but never get the time to share my opinions. But your point is right it really was a dumb move.

[_act_]

This keep me wondering how this kind of mistake could have happened to a whale, the amount in consideration here is much and as we already know that crypto transactions are irreversible, ones sent and confirmed, that settles it all, i rarely see that a whale will fall into the hands of scammers when he knows what took him to be where he was, there is no need of relenting efforts in what we do.

the only reason i can think of is that this whale was just influenced and not really an expert when it comes to these things it is not uncommon for the rich to have financial advisors which basically just tell them what to do not all rich are very careful and smart it is unfortunate for him but i hope that teaches him a lesson

You could be right and this may be the exact situation of this case, because if not for a newbie who amassed wealth for the first time in cryptocurrency, no one could have afford making a silly mistake, but i don't know the way other people reason and think for them to have dabble into what they are new to, invest and still make it in a large amount, am sure this same person would have been somewhere by now been depressed of the incident for loosing his asset.