The $12 Million Copy-Paste Error
A single Ethereum user lost $12.2 million in January after falling victim to an “address poisoning” attack, according to data from security firm Scam Sniffer. The incident, which follows a staggering $50 million loss by another user in December, highlights the escalating lethality of vanity address scams. The attacker did not hack a private key or exploit a smart contract; they simply exploited the user’s habit of copying wallet addresses from transaction history.
The result? A 12-million-dollar transfer sent directly to a spoofed wallet.
The Mechanic: Weaponized Dust
Address poisoning relies on “vanity addresses”, cryptographic wallets generated to match the first and last 4-6 characters of a victim’s frequently used counterparty. Attackers continuously monitor the mempool for high-value targets.
Once a target is identified, the scammer broadcasts a zero-value or negligible “dust” transaction from the spoofed address to the victim. This plants the malicious address at the top of the victim’s transaction history. When the user later attempts to send funds, they inadvertently copy the poisoned address instead of the legitimate one. Data from Coin Metrics suggests this tactic is being industrialized: stablecoin-related dust transactions now account for approximately 11% of all Ethereum traffic, a surge analysts attribute to lower fees following the network’s recent Fusaka upgrade.
Institutional Response: EF x SEAL
The industry is mobilizing. The Ethereum Foundation (EF) confirmed it is sponsoring the Security Alliance (SEAL) to fund a dedicated security engineer focused on neutralizing wallet drainers. The partnership falls under SEAL’s “Trillion Dollar Security” initiative, which aims to harden the social layer of the crypto stack.
This move signals a shift in the EF’s capital allocation strategy, moving beyond protocol-level security to address user interface vulnerabilities. With Ether trading near $2,100 and on-chain activity heating up, the alliance aims to dismantle the infrastructure used by drainer-as-a-service gangs before the next bull market cycle fully takes hold.
