Online hackers Steal Over $4 Million in Fake Airdrops along with other Scams on Solana

Two wallet drainers have effectively stolen huge amount of money price of crypto assets from Solana users within the last month alone, according to a different report according to public blockchain data.

Deployers of both programs, Rainbow Drainer and Node Drainer, have stolen a combined $4.17 million price of assets from three,967 Solana wallets since late November, based on analysis by Scam Sniffer and crypto analytics platform Dune. Nearly all individuals thefts have happened since mid-December.

Malicious actors have the symptoms of stolen nearly all these funds by targeting specific Solana token communities with NFT airdrops, then attaching phishing website links to individuals NFTs. Legitimate airdrops—that is, the launch of free tokens or NFTs associated with protocols and apps—are increasing recently, but so might be social networking scams presented just as real giveaways.

Users of Rainbow Drainer, for example, targeted holders of ZERO, the native token of Solana meta protocol Analysoor, by airdropping them NFTs that claimed to provide vouchers for 1,000 free ZERO tokens. Curious recipients then began to click on the exterior link associated with the NFT, and sign a transaction linking their wallets towards the site (presumably hoping receiving free tokens). Within a few moments, these unsuspecting users’ wallets were drained of digital assets.

Such attacks using Rainbow Drainer have netted thiefs $2.15 million within the last couple of days, based on data published by Dune Analytics. Assets stolen during these exploits include BONK, ZERO, USDT, and USDC, among other tokens. 

Using Node Drainer, online hackers placed similar phishing links in Discord groups and infiltrated Twitter accounts to publish them, including those of cybersecurity firm and Google subsidiary Mandiant. All in all, such exploits netted Node Drainer deployers $2.025 million, mainly by means of ANALOS and BONK.

Even though it is unknown the number of individuals were behind these attacks, on-chain evidence suggests a minimum of a good part of them stemmed from one individual or select few.

Based on Scam Sniffer, just one wallet address connected using the wallets drains used AllBridge to transfer over $a million price of stolen assets mix-chain to Ethereum, in which the funds were exchanged for ETH and transferred again. 

Whereas many crypto scams on Ethereum can frequently concentrate on fooling users into paying wallet access when individuals users shouldn’t, malicious exploits on Solana frequently see online hackers make an effort to convince unsuspecting users for connecting wallets for any false pretense—typically, self-enrichment.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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