Amid the bullish market conditions that have seen Shiba Inu rocket higher in price, delivering notable gains to its holders, fraudsters have plotted new schemes to rip them off their funds.
On Tuesday, December 6, the Shiba Inu community received serious warnings from Susbarium Shibarium Trustwatch over the discovery of a very tricky new scam quietly targeting SHIB holders through a technique dubbed wallet address spoofing.
Scammers target Shiba Inu daily transactions
The new fraudulent scheme, which appears extremely legitimate, is already catching many crypto users off guard, considering the unique mechanism it operates on.
Unlike regular crypto scams that often involve the use of fake links or phishing websites, this spoofing scam targets daily transaction histories and active SHIB wallets.
According to the warnings issued, scammers monitor active wallets and then send tiny “dust” transactions from addresses that are intentionally designed to look almost identical to real ones the victim has used before.
To deceive crypto users, the scammers ensure that the fake addresses share the same beginning and ending characters as the victim’s actual address, making it extremely easy to confuse the two.
When the victim later checks their transaction history on Etherscan or inside their wallet to copy a previous address for a new transfer, the scammer’s fake address appears nearby.
As such, the scammers expect potential victims to copy the manipulated address without carefully checking the full string. This way, the victims send their funds straight to the scammer, and they are gone for good.
Safety measures provided to SHIB community
While the misleading nature of this scam provides holders with no obvious warning signs, as there are no suspicious links nor compromised devices involved, the scam relies entirely on typical user behavior, targeting holders who have the habit of reusing addresses from their transaction history.
Nonetheless, the Shiba Inu community has been urged to slow down and verify the full wallet address before every transfer, not just the first and last few characters. Holders have also been strongly warned to completely avoid copying addresses from random incoming transactions.
Caroline Amosun
Alex Dovbnya
Denys Serhiichuk
Gamza Khanzadaev