A new phishing scam targeting Coinbase customers has emerged, according to one experienced crypto investor who fortunately evaded it. And scammers are getting more sophisticated, especially with a new arsenal of artificial intelligence tools at their disposal.
On June 14, crypto trader and entrepreneur Jacob Canfield warned his 90,000 Twitter followers of a new scam targeting Coinbase customers.
Coinbase Phishing Scams Increasing
Canfield explained that the scam was initiated by a text message saying that his Coinbase 2FA (two-factor authorization) was changed.
He then received three calls from Coinbase “customer support.” These were asking if he was traveling outside the United States and requesting the change.
The alleged scammers then said the change request was canceled, referring the customer to the “security team” to avoid a 48-hour account suspension.
“They had my name, my email, and my location and sent a ‘verification code’ email from [email protected] to my personal email.”
Canfield said he did not need assistance and had changed his password himself. They then said they were locking the account down for 7 days “due to a lack of verification unless I provided the code.”
This was when it twigged that this was a sophisticated phishing scam.
“After the first text, I immediately logged into my Coinbase and changed the password and 2FA and caught on that it was a scam almost immediately. But I doubt that 98-99% of people that get this would realize it and would have unlocked their Coinbase accounts.”
He added that the code they sent was his actual 2FA. However, they sent it from their own email and “were logging into my account to drain it while we were on the phone.”
There were no warnings or alerts on the official Coinbase Twitter feed.
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Blockchain sleuth ‘ZachXBT’ said, “It looks like this is an ongoing social engineering/phishing scam.”
Canfield said he was unsure of how or why he was targeted. He added that it was possibly from a data breach from a third party or unrelated to crypto off the dark web.
“Lots of sophistication, coordination, and thought went into this scam. They’re going to get a lot of people’s money.”
Crypto Scams Becoming More Sophisticated
There are several telltale signs of a scam such as this. One is that large corporations such as Coinbase very rarely cold call their customers unless the customer has initiated contact requiring action.
Other things to look out for are email headers to check the originating email address. In February, MetaMask users received fake emails asking for their KYC details.
Furthermore, security experts have warned over the increasing use of AI to generate more sophisticated crypto scams.
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