As reported by The Defiant, an unsuspecting user experienced a loss of $69 million in WBTC after transferring funds to an address associated with an attack identified as address poisoning.

Certik, a Web3 cybersecurity firm, was the first to raise an alert about the harmful transaction on an early Friday morning. In this incident, the attacker replicated a 0.05 ETH transfer worth $150, which ultimately caused the victim to send the funds to an incorrect address as detailed in Certik's X account.

Address poisoning is a tactic wherein attackers flood an address with spam transactions to confuse users who are not paying proper attention. Subsequently, users tend to copy the fake address, which often begins and ends with the same six digits, instead of directing the funds to a valid wallet address.

Hackers can easily identify an address linked to a user's exchange account by monitoring recurring payments and other transaction patterns.

The threat researcher known as Officer, formerly associated with the Web3 cybersecurity firm ImmuneFi, informed The Defiant that these types of attacks, while prevalent, generally have a low success rate.

Following the attack, the perpetrator carried out fund movement through eight distinctive transactions, as revealed by Etherscan.

Officer highlighted that a significant number of users exhibit careless behavior within the crypto realm. A prevalent tendency among users is to blindly copy the previous address from their transaction history for reassurance, which hackers exploit by transferring small crypto amounts from closely resembled addresses.

To mitigate such attacks, Officer advised against trusting the clipboard feature, especially since malware with a strikingly similar method is in circulation, predominantly focused on the clipboard. Users are advised to scrutinize each digit carefully and consider adding critical addresses to the allow list if feasible.

During 2024, there has been a downward trend in exploits. Hackers were able to steal $336 million in crypto during the first quarter of this year, denoting a 23% decrease from the corresponding period last year, according to the most recent report by Web3 security firm ImmuneFi.