Scammers hacked prominent crypto market data company, CoinMarketCap’s CrypTown social network and uploaded links to a fake token sale in an attempt to deceive potential users.
The verified account of Binance-owned CoinMarketCap tweeted a post promoting the crypto data aggregator’s token presale, according to screenshots shared by users. “Official CoinMarketCap Presale,” the post read, before asking users to click on a seemingly fake link to buy “CMC” tokens.
While CoinMarketCap has not explicitly addressed the incident, it did post a statement alerting users that the data aggregator will never ask for money, private keys, or any other sensitive information.
“CoinMarketCap is a data aggregator media service. We are NOT hosting a Pre-Sale for CoinMarketCap Tokens. Beware of scammers impersonating us,” the data aggregator said.
Meanwhile, analysts claim that the scam was easy to recognize from a technological standpoint.
“Intruders offered to just send money to some third-party address,” Dmitry Mishunin, founder and CEO of a smart contract audit company HashEx, told Cryptonews.com, adding that: “It is unlikely that such a large company would conduct a sale without a smart contract and connecting a wallet on the site.”
The year has seen its fair share of the ostensibly rising crypto crime trend thus far. The frequency and size of recent attacks, such as the theft of over USD 600 million from the gaming-focused Ronin Network, can be classified as one of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks ever.