GIGA whale loses $6.09m after clicking a malicious Zoom link: report

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As a seasoned crypto investor with a few battle scars to show for it, I can’t help but feel a mix of frustration and resignation upon hearing about yet another large-scale crypto heist. The Gigachad fiasco serves as a stark reminder that the world of digital assets is still very much the Wild West, and the bad guys are always finding new ways to separate us from our hard-earned coins.

In a clever phishing scheme, cybercriminals posing as meme coin investors swindled more than $6 million by sending a bogus Zoom invitation for a supposed meeting. The link led to fraudulent login pages where personal information and assets were stolen from the unsuspecting investor.

On November 11th, con artists managed to swindle around 6.09 million dollars worth of the meme coin Gigachad (GIGA) from a large-scale investor by convincing them to click on a harmful link that appeared to be a Zoom meeting invitation in disguise.

The individual known as ‘Still in the Game’ on platform X stated that clicking the provided link resulted in malicious software being downloaded onto their computer, enabling the hacker to empty their bank account.

As a security analyst, I’ve been analyzing a recent report from Onchain Lens regarding a blockchain attack. The attacker successfully drained approximately 95.27 million GIGA from three different wallets, which equates to around $2.1 million when converted into SOL (approximately 11,759 SOL). Unfortunately, this dramatic sale caused the price of the meme coin to plummet from $0.63 to $0.54.

As an analyst, I’ve observed that despite the pseudonymous victim explaining the recent stock drop was due to a phishing attack, GIGA has still plummeted by more than 15%, trading slightly above $0.049 at the moment of press.

At present, an investigation is being conducted by both the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a group of experts in forensics, with the aim of retrieving the money that was recently stolen.

Investigative firm Scam Sniffer pointed out the close resemblance between genuine Zoom links and a deceitful link employed in a phishing scam. The fraudulent link, “us04-zoom.[.]us,” is quite similar to the authentic one, “us02web.zoom.[.]us.” This similarity might fool unaware users into clicking it.

Although these seemingly harmless links might appear straightforward, scammers frequently employ psychological manipulation techniques to win their targets’ confidence before pushing them to click on dangerous links. They can pretend to be familiar faces or create a false sense of urgency, making it simpler for unwitting users to disregard minor discrepancies in URLs.

Previously this year, a cybersecurity professional issued a warning about an identical assault on individuals who hold non-fungible tokens. Fraudsters disguised harmful links as Zoom invitations, leading users to a fake site that looked like the actual video conferencing platform. This deceptive website tricked people into downloading malware, which then infiltrated their computers and stole confidential information.

Over time, cryptocurrency phishing scams have become more complex and varied, resulting in a staggering loss of over $750 million during the third quarter of 2024, as reported by blockchain analysis company CertiK.

In recent times, some significant cyber attacks have occurred. For instance, there was the incident where over $35 million was stolen from a digital wallet connected to a venture capital fund, and another instance where $55 million in DAI was drained from a “whale” wallet. These losses were due to victims unwittingly providing a “permission” signature as part of a phishing scheme designed to deceive them into approving the transactions.

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2024-11-12 13:33