Signature Phishing Up 200% As January Losses Pass $6M

Someone lost $12.25M in January by copying the wrong address from their transaction history. In December, another victim lost $50M the same way.

Two victims. $62M gone.

Signature phishing also surged — $6.27M stolen across 4,741 victims (+207% vs Dec).

Losses last month were highly concentrated. Two wallets accounted for roughly 65% of the total stolen through phishing and other attacks, including $3.02 million taken through a permit and increaseAllowance attack involving SLV and XAUt tokens, and $1.08 million drained via a permit attack.

Sergeenkov argued that lower Ethereum fees have changed the economics of mass poisoning attacks. While conversion rates remain extremely low, the reduced cost of sending millions of dust transactions has made the strategy viable, with profits now coming from a small number of high-value mistakes.

In addition to ensuring users check transactions and make sure they understand what they are signing or where they are sending money, wallets are also trying to introduce features to limit the risk of attacks.

Tara Annison, head of product at Twinstake, said wallets are increasingly adding transaction simulations, clearer warnings and pre-execution checks to flag risky interactions. "Rabby does pre-execution simulation and will warn you if you're interacting with known malicious smart contracts or if there's hidden logic in the transaction," she told Decrypt.

Metamask, meanwhile, “gives you a nice big warning if the site you're connecting to looks like a phishing website and includes human readable warnings if the transaction looks like it might be about to do something dodgy for your assets,” Annison said. She added wallets are placing security features like this “front and centre to avoid you signing something you shouldn't.”

Decrypt has approached the Ethereum Foundation for comment.