Several Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan advertisements have been identified as part of a major phishing campaign targeting Etherscan users.
On April 8, X community member McBiblets identified some advertisements on Etherscan as wallet drainers, warning users against being redirected to phishing websites when clicking on such advertisements. Further investigations revealed that the phishing advertisements appearing on Etherscan were also displayed on various known phishing websites.
Wallet drainer scam
Picking up on McBiblets’ lead, Web3 anti-scam platform Scam Sniffer found that the phishing advertisements spread beyond Etherscan and were showing up on popular search engines such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, as well as social media platform X.Scam Sniffer suspected the lack of oversight from advertisement aggregators as the root cause of the large-scale phishing campaign:
“Etherscan aggregates ads from platforms like Coinzilla and Persona, where insufficient filtering could lead to exposure to phishing attempts.”
The wallet drainer scam involves luring users to fake websites and prompting them to link their crypto wallets. Once linked, the scammer can withdraw funds into their personal wallet addresses without user authentication or permissionBlockchain security firm SlowMist’s chief information security officer, 23pds, also issued a warning about the phishing advertisements on Etherscan:
Continued threat of crypto phishing
The infamous and seasoned cyber phishing organization Angel Drainer is suspected of running a phishing attack against Etherscan users. However, no concrete evidence about the scammers’ identity has yet been discovered. In 2023 alone, crypto phishing scams stole nearly $300 million from over 324,000 victims through wallet drainers.
