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Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

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Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#81

Post by matkoniecz »

grp000 wrote: post #73
ttiurani wrote: post #34

"She tells me a bit about her metaverse project, Space Falcon. I'm not really sold on it, but I'm not really an NFT person so I didn't have any reason to think it was a bad idea either.[...] It seems kind of like a get-rich-quick scheme, but again, that's kind of how I see a lot of NFTs. With all that she's doing for Arrow, there's no harm in showing a little support." The real takeaway from this is that it's dangero…

I don't see it that way at all. The NFT vector is arbitrary. The point was to drain his accounts and nothing more. If a less suspicious method was available, I'm sure the scammers would have taken that one.

Is there any case of NFT that is not some combination of get-rich-quick scheme, Ponzi scheme, search for a bigger fool, FOMO-powered stupidity, extracting money from naive people or satire of NFT?

And NFT part adds anything substantial and is not replaceable by regular transfer (either transfer of money or BTC-like)?

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#82

Post by sidcool »

scyclow wrote: post #43
sidcool wrote: post #18

I feel incredibly dumb for not getting the details of how it happened.

He had $130 million wrapped up in an ERC20 token called Aave wETH (aWETH). ERC20 tokens let you approve another address to spend those tokens on your behalf. Basically, the scammers tried to trick him into approving all of his Aave wETH by creating a fake website designed to make him think that he's approving a different token with the same aWETH symbol.

So he spent $130 million to buy the NFT in the first place?

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#83

Post by randomhodler84 »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #80
randomhodler84 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are DAOs attractive to you? They are plutocratic institutions.

Programmatical organization would define the attractiveness for me.

If you remove the plutocratic and cryptocurrency components, all you have software, and as you are a developer, you already have everything you need.

Don’t fall for the DAO trap, it’s a pit for fools to throw their money into.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#84

Post by matkoniecz »

leshow wrote: post #35
chrisco255 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust them. Just last week, GoFundMe rugged a bunch of funds sent for a legitimate political protest. They can snap their fingers and freeze your funds and hold it indefinitely, without a warrant. I admit that the Approval UX for wallets and tokens needs to be improved. Unlimited spend approvals should always be flagged in the UX. And approvals should be atomic (single transaction only, with a clearly listed…

> Just last week, GoFundMe rugged a bunch of funds sent for a legitimate political protest. The protest is illegally blocking much of downtown Ottawa, as a result GoFundMe decided to refund the donors. That's far from a "rug"

Note that GoFundMe decision to refund is a change from its previous one that happened only after outcry.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#85

Post by magicalhippo »

scyclow wrote: post #43
sidcool wrote: post #18

I feel incredibly dumb for not getting the details of how it happened.

He had $130 million wrapped up in an ERC20 token called Aave wETH (aWETH). ERC20 tokens let you approve another address to spend those tokens on your behalf. Basically, the scammers tried to trick him into approving all of his Aave wETH by creating a fake website designed to make him think that he's approving a different token with the same aWETH symbol.

So besides getting scammed, what use are these ERC20 for?

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#86

Post by elil17 »

tylersmith wrote: post #41
kelp wrote: post #32

This was an absolutely fascinating and chilling story. The thing that struck me about it is the scam didn't work for a few reasons: 1. He typically had a practice of not using his main wallet for things like this. 2. He got wary and actually read the smart contracts. This is a level of technical competence required that's going to mean most people have to offload this to a trusted intermediary. And then what's the po…

The purpose of decentralization is solely censorship resistance. It has nothing to do with consumer protections, consumer education, or easier to check software.

What exactly is censored when you use paper currency?

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#87

Post by randomhodler84 »

elil17 wrote: post #86
tylersmith wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of decentralization is solely censorship resistance. It has nothing to do with consumer protections, consumer education, or easier to check software.

What exactly is censored when you use paper currency?

The amount. A real example is CNY, which is limit to 100 yuan notes, deliberately to make it hard to move large sums.

1000 USD bills exist but are very rare. 1000 euro note exists but I think that’s on the way out.

Your point that cash is censorship resistant is good, yes and we need to make sure it remains, however the physical limitations are defacto censorship.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#88

Post by sbierwagen »

vmception wrote: post #44
sidcool wrote: post #18

I feel incredibly dumb for not getting the details of how it happened.

Hacker sends NFT to Thomas. Since NFT's are subject to heavy criticism of their existence, a lot of people are developing extra things you actually can do with them. The market is interested in that being done right, so its interesting to be a part of projects that are trying. This extra thing required Thomas sending the NFT to another service they developed. Smart contracts in Ethereum Virtual Machine environments (…

> a lot of people are developing extra things you actually can do with them

To be clear, the “thing” in this instance is NFT staking: a ponzi upon a ponzi where you buy a NFT and then lend it to a platform, which pays you fees. Platforms can advertise ridiculous yields (200% APY) because deposits go right out the door again as fees to people higher up in the pyramid.

https://learn.bybit.com/defi/what-is-nft-staking/

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#89

Post by MPSimmons »

matkoniecz wrote: post #81
grp000 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it that way at all. The NFT vector is arbitrary. The point was to drain his accounts and nothing more. If a less suspicious method was available, I'm sure the scammers would have taken that one.

Is there any case of NFT that is not some combination of get-rich-quick scheme, Ponzi scheme, search for a bigger fool, FOMO-powered stupidity, extracting money from naive people or satire of NFT? And NFT part adds anything substantial and is not replaceable by regular transfer (either transfer of money or BTC-like)?

I'm not convinced it isn't crypto itself, and NFT is just an extension of that.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#90

Post by tylersmith »

elil17 wrote: post #86
tylersmith wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of decentralization is solely censorship resistance. It has nothing to do with consumer protections, consumer education, or easier to check software.

What exactly is censored when you use paper currency?

Cash has pretty decent censorship resistance. It's when going digital that it gets difficult because you either need a centralized clearinghouse to prevent double spends (Visa, PayPal, etc) or a BFT consensus algorithm ("cryptocurrency").

I'm fact when discussing both privacy and censorship resistance I often cite cash as a target goal.

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