An Analysis of the Most Common Crypto Scams on Twitter

Author: snake

Source: Serpent's Twitter

Twitter is one of the most commonly used social media for crypto users. While it is convenient for us to synchronize the latest industry news in time, it has also become a medium for many crypto scams. This article will analyze the most common cryptocurrency and NFT scams on Twitter, and help you identify and avoid them.

1. Fake link scam

Scammers use fake links that contain similar Unicode characters.

For example, in the two pictures below, the scammers changed the letter "i" to a similar character.

These fake urls resolve to:

• xn-premnt-s9a.xyz

• xn - premnt-zva.xyz

If you click on these fake links, you will be taken to a scammer's phishing site, which looks a lot like the real PREMINT.

When you click "Login Register", based on your NFT total collection value and wallet balance, it will send a Seaport signature, which will drain your NFT or try to drain your ETH if you click to confirm the signature.

3. The fake REVOKE.CASH scam

In the image below, we can see the crooks pretending to be OpenSea (the second screenshot is a hacked authentication account), trying to induce a state of emergency and use your fear to trick you into visiting a phishing site.

Scammers specialize in liking, retweeting, and replying to make tweets look legitimate, then lock Twitter so no one else can actually reply.

They also use bots to privately message large numbers of users on Twitter in an attempt to get them to see the tweets, or simply @many Twitter users in tweets.

3. Honeypot account scam

I'm sure many of you have received this email and are probably thinking, how could they trick you out of this email?

Although this wallet itself has USDT, it has no transaction fees for transferring USDT out. So, if you believe the scammer's words and try to transfer transaction fees into this account, you will be hooked.

As soon as you transfer money, no matter how small the amount, the bot will immediately transfer the money from this account to the scammer's wallet.

4. Hacking verified accounts and posting fake minting and airdrops

Scammers usually use hacked verified accounts to post fake airdrops/Mint, but scammers have a lot going for them.

In the first screenshot, we can see a verified account impersonating the CEO of OpenSea, posting a fake SEA airdrop. In the last screenshot, we can see a fake "BAYC animator" targeting BAYC holders. They just cheat out of your wallet.

Do not blindly trust the verification symbol on the account, it means nothing. Be sure to double check the username.

5. Fake P2E games/projects

By individually targeting high-value NFT collectors, or making them widely available, crooks impersonate/create P2E projects and release malware-laden “beta versions”

They also pay for reviews.

After opening the file, we can see that the rar file contains the actual game library, making it look legitimate. However, the launcher is infected and steals your browser cookies and browser data (including extension data).

6. Fake artwork commission scam

Illegal companies issue false commissions, claiming that they can make money from commissions, and specialize in defrauding artists. Hidden within the files sent by the crooks is an executable extension fraudulent screensaver (.scr) file.

This scr file will grab all your cookies, passwords, extension data (including wallet data), etc.

This scam is also used to target internet influencers, send fake artwork previews, etc.

7. UniSwap front-running scam

You've probably seen this kind of spam in replies to random tweets, but how does it actually work?

This kind of link will take you to a video that teaches you how to "earn $1400 a day on UniSwap Early Access".

In the video, they tell you that the more you put in, the more you earn.

They will ask you to fund the contract first, then click "Start".

Let's take a look at how the crook's start() and withdraw() functions work.

Once you call one of these functions, it will transfer all the funds in the contract to uniswapDepositAddress(), which the scammer calls from another GitHub contract, which will eventually return the scammer's wallet address:

0x107fafa6565f33d03ca4dfcdf686ba352fa9283c

8. Cryptocurrency Recovery Scam

I'm sure most of us have seen these bots in replies to tweets containing certain keywords.

Simply put, they try to target people who have already been scammed and claim that they can get their funds back.

They claim to be the developers of the blockchain and say they need a fee to deploy a smart contract to recover the stolen funds, which is of course impossible. They took the money and ran away.

The above are the 8 most common cryptocurrency/NFT scams on Twitter, I hope it will be helpful to everyone. Everyone is welcome to share with friends and the community to prevent more people from being deceived.