$8M Stolen In A Uniswap Liquidity Providers Phishing Scam

An estimated $8 million has been stolen after Uniswap liquidity providers fell for a phishing scam. Uniswap said that phishing scams are a problem that is far too common in the crypto world today and it is encouraging its community to be careful always.

In that context, the decentralized exchange insists that its infrastructure has not suffered an exploit and it remains secure to use. While offering more details about what happened, Uniswap stated that the scammer had managed to airdrop malicious tokens to various wallets.

That subsequently directed users to a fake interface where it was alleged that these tokens could be swapped for UNI. However, in case the unsuspecting victims ended up approving the transaction:

“The hackers would have the ability to redeem all of the user’s Uniswap v3 LP tokens for their full underlying value.”

Uniswap states that phishing scams are an issue “far too common in crypto today.” It told its users:

“This is a good reminder for wallets and other interfaces to be vigilant about hiding spam and tokens with URLs in their name.”

The DEX insisted that airdrops to unofficial domains are most likely to be phishing schemes; and that, in case it was to perform an airdrop, advance notice would be given on a number of its official channels.

What Can Be Done To Help Uniswap And Crypto?

Uniswap’s founder Hayden Adams was asked what could be done to help prevent such attacks from happening.

In his opinion, education is important, and enhancing user interfaces offers a great degree of protection. One of his ideas could include hiding the unknown tokens that have a URL in the name.

In general, 73,399 addresses were sent to the malicious token posing as a UNI airdrop. With the crypto space still majorly unregulated, it is expected that more such scams will come up in the future.