Hackers Successfully Pulled Off an EOS ICO Phishing Scam

There are many ways on how you can lose your cryptocurrency today. It could be a mistake of losing your private keys or perhaps a hacker stealing from a crypto exchange company. In fact, Japan has changed its rules and regulations following the hack of Coincheck.

What if it is also possible to get people to lose their cryptos via a phishing scam? Over the years, phishing scams are used in order to trick the non-tech-savvy and elderly into providing their information when it comes to buying products online.

How exactly did they pull off a phishing scam on some tech-savvy crypto investors? They used crypto investors’ greed and anticipation in order to gain access to their cryptos.

EOS ICO Breach

First, the scammers were able to breach the internal system of EOS ICO in order to trick its crypto investors into investing.

To give you an idea regarding the anticipation of investors on EOS, it is on track in raising $4 billion right before the year-long sale of EOS token ends by Friday, 7 PM E.T. The proceeds are going to be used in order to develop a new blockchain software by a startup called Block.one.

And though Block.one is successful in selling one billion EOS coins, a significant amount is about to end up with hackers.

How Did They Do It?

After gaining access to the internal system of EOS ICO, what the hackers did was to convince the potential investors that they can have the opportunity to invest in some blockchain venture. The emails had the subject line “The most anticipated event has arrived!”. It also included the actual website of Block.one and the text accurately described the technical details regarding that of EOS ICO. However, instead of being linked to eos.io, hackers took victims to its address: “eȯs.com” instead. Here, the website asked for the victim’s private key in order to unlock the digital crypto wallets promising that they are going to receive the EOS airdrop.

Admitting Their Mistake

Block.one admitted their mistake that some hackers were able to get into their email support system which is operated by Zendesk. Zendesk didn’t respond to comment on the matter. However, Block.one had no other choice but to shut down its Zendesk system. They also published a statement on Sunday saying that investors should be on “high alert for scams”.

Regulatory Changes

This is the reason why different regulators from different parts of the world are already looking closely at the development of the crypto market. In fact, on June 13, the SEC will hold a “town hall” event. It would invite community members in order to engage in an informal discussion. Its topics would range from cryptos to FinTech and everything in between.

The SEC has taken a strong stance in order to prevent these types of scenarios. However, it is clear that the position of SEC is not exactly anti-crypto per se but rather anti-scams. Unfortunately, if you are not being victimized by phishing scams, you could still be a victim of ICOs pretending to be a legit blockchain project.