Authored by: Neil Tyagi  

Rip-off artists know no bounds—and that additionally applies to stealing your cryptocurrency. Crypto scams are like some other monetary rip-off, besides the scammers are after your crypto property quite than your money. 

Crypto scammers use many techniques in different monetary crimes, resembling pump-and-dump scams that lure traders to buy an asset with pretend claims about its worth or outright makes an attempt to steal digital property. 

This time scammers had been making an attempt to get an investor to ship a digital asset as a type of fee for a fraudulent transaction. 

It begins with a Tweet used as bait to lure harmless cryptocurrency traders into buying a non-existent token, associated to a reputed firm, SpaceX. 

The theme used right here by scammers is the sale of the official cryptocurrency of SpaceX. Within the above picture we will additionally see the attain of the tweet is excessive. (224.4K views) 

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The hyperlink current on this tweet redirects to  area[-]launch[.]web, which is already marked as malicious by McAfee. 

A WHOIS search on the location reveals it’s hosted on Cloudflare. Cloudflare has more and more grow to be the primary alternative for scammers to host malicious web sites and defend their property. 

A WHOIS lookup on the area reveals redacted private data. No surprises there  

When we click on on the hyperlink, it takes us to a login web page and asks for AreaX login credentials. This web page was designed as a phishing web page for folks who have actual SpaceX login credentials. 

For individuals who don’t have SpaceX credentials, they’ll use the signup hyperlink.  

After we log in, it redirects to a touchdown web page the place one can buy the supposedly unique cryptocurrency launched by SpaceX

As you’ll be able to see, it impersonates because the official SpaceX portal for purchasing their token. It additionally has all the weather associated to SpaceX and its branding. 

In the above picture, we will see that scammers are using the social engineering trick of FOMO (Worry Of Lacking Out) as they’ve created a timer showing that the pretend tokens are solely out there for buy for the subsequent 10 hours. This additionally makes certain that the rip-off would finish earlier than all of the on-line safety distributors flag the location. 

Scammers also permit customers to buy pretend tokens from about 22 cryptocurrencies, the outstanding being Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT. 

Scammers even provide a bonus of pretend SpaceX tokens if customers are able to buy a minimal quantity

Right here we will discover the BTC pockets tackle of the scammers and see the transactions associated to those wallets. 

The crypto pockets addresses of scammers for the next currencies are.  

• BTC bc1qhhec8pkhj2cxtk6u0dace8terq22hspxkr5pee 
• USDT 398a9BF5fe5fc6CaBB4a8Be8B428138BC7356EC1 
• ETH 16a243E3392Ffd9A872F3fD90dE79Fe7266452F9 

transactions associated to those addresses, we discover folks have grow to be victims of this rip-off by sending funds to those wallets. The Bitcoin pockets above has gathered round 2,780 US dollars. You may also see three of the final transactions made to the account. 

Equally, for Ethereum, the scammers have gathered round 1,450 US {dollars} 

We noticed two in style cryptocurrencies, however scammers are utilizing about 22 completely different crypto wallets.  

Crypto phishing scams continuously evolve, and new techniques emerge recurrently. Customers ought to take the initiative to teach themselves concerning the newest phishing strategies and scams concentrating on the cryptocurrency group. Additionally, keep knowledgeable by researching and studying about current phishing incidents and safety greatest practices. 

IOC (Indicator of Compromise)