The crypto community faces another hacking incident as the co-founder and CEO of Nest, a security-focused crypto wallet, fell victim to a phishing attack while trying to claim what he believed was a legitimate airdrop event. He lost 52 stETH tokens, valued at $125,000.
The phishing scam revolved around a fake LFG token airdrop event aimed to reward Ethereum users who spent over $4,269 in transaction fees since 2016 and to attract them to the Solana blockchain. A counterfeit website impersonating the official LFG token emerged, deceiving users into transferring their funds, including Nest Wallet’s Bill Lou.
Lou was misled by a link from a Google search result that led to the fraudulent website. He followed the link, believing it to be a guide for claiming the airdrop, and proceeded to sign a message. He admitted that had he used Nest Wallet instead of MetaMask, the scam would have been detected, highlighting the importance of transaction simulation features which Nest Wallet possesses but MetaMask lacks.
Furthermore, Lou advised users to always search for official accounts when following links and to use multisig wallets for added security. The incident serves as a cautionary tale for the crypto community to remain vigilant against such scams.
Lou was not the only victim of this type of attack; other users also reported their wallets being drained after clicking on similar fraudulent links from fake accounts. The project behind LFG acknowledged the issue and urged the community to report any scam accounts to protect other users.
According to the project, 387,000 eligible wallets were entitled to receive a total of 400 billion LFG tokens. Unclaimed tokens will be burned within a month. At the time of the report, CoinGecko listed the LFG token at a value of $0.000069, with approximately 25,000 Solana users having claimed the LFG token so far. The total supply of 1 trillion LFG tokens is allocated with 60% for the airdrop event, 10% for early contributors, 6% for liquidity provision, and 24% for the treasury.