Massive phishing campaign linked to Etherscan advertisements

A major phishing campaign targeting Etherscan users has been discovered, with several advertisements on the Ethereum blockchain explorer identified as part of the scheme. On April 8, a community member named McBiblets warned users about these advertisements, cautioning against being redirected to phishing websites upon clicking on them. Further investigations revealed that these phishing ads were also appearing on well-known phishing websites. The Web3 anti-scam platform, Scam Sniffer, picked up on McBiblets’ findings and discovered that the phishing ads were not limited to Etherscan, but were also showing up on popular search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and social media platform X. Scam Sniffer suspected that the lack of oversight from advertisement aggregators was the main cause of this large-scale phishing campaign. The scam involved luring users to fake websites and prompting them to link their crypto wallets, allowing scammers to withdraw funds without user authentication or permission. SlowMist, a blockchain security firm, also issued a warning about these phishing advertisements on Etherscan, suspecting the notorious cyber phishing organization, Angel Drainer, of running the attack. However, the identity of the scammers remains unknown at present. In 2023 alone, crypto phishing scams stole almost $300 million from over 324,000 victims through wallet drainers. Scam Sniffer reported that even when these drainers shut down, other “phishing gangs” quickly take their place, as there is no shortage of platforms catering to scammers.