Discord scam on the rise

[zasad@]

https://cointelegraph.com/news/discord-scams-crypto-nft-theft-social-engineering

Hide your crypto: Infamous ‘try my game’ Discord scam on the rise
An X user known as Princess Hypio said they lost $170,000 in crypto and NFTs to a scammer who infiltrated a Discord server and pretended to have mutual friends.

Brief History of Scams:

"NFT artist Princess Hypio lost $170,000 in crypto and NFTs after a scammer convinced her to download a game on Steam.

The game itself was safe, but an infected server allowed hackers to gain full access to the device and wallets.

How it works:
▪️The hacker infiltrates the Discord community, observes and “gains trust”.
▪️Finds out who has crypto or NFTs.
▪️Offers to play and sends a link with malware.
▪️Result – the hacker gains access to wallets, personal data and assets."
Crypto Headlines AI(C)

[_act_]

But did you know that this is not new? This may not be as common as X (formerly known as Twitter) hack but we have reported many hacks that someone's discord server would be hacked by hackers and be used to do some malicious things that can lead to theft of victims coins. I even posted some on this forum in the past. It is very possible that it might now be on the rise, people need to be very careful.

[cr1776]

https://cointelegraph.com/news/discord-scams-crypto-nft-theft-social-engineering

Hide your crypto: Infamous ‘try my game’ Discord scam on the rise
An X user known as Princess Hypio said they lost $170,000 in crypto and NFTs to a scammer who infiltrated a Discord server and pretended to have mutual friends.

Brief History of Scams:

"NFT artist Princess Hypio lost $170,000 in crypto and NFTs after a scammer convinced her to download a game on Steam.

The game itself was safe, but an infected server allowed hackers to gain full access to the device and wallets.

How it works:
▪️The hacker infiltrates the Discord community, observes and “gains trust”.
▪️Finds out who has crypto or NFTs.
▪️Offers to play and sends a link with malware.
▪️Result – the hacker gains access to wallets, personal data and assets."
Crypto Headlines AI(C)

Another example as to why cold storage is most recommended.  If you use paper or something or a device that is never online, this type of thing wouldn't happen.  Sure if you have $1 in crypto that's completely different, but $170k!?!??!

[DeathAngel]

This type of scam isn’t solely limited to Discord. It’s sad that there are people like this out there but we have to be very careful what we are downloading online. Don’t trust anybody, assume that everybody is a potential scammer until you can prove otherwise, then check again. It’s a minefield of potential wallet drains out there, be vigilant at every turn.

[Hispo]

Thank you for the headsup, considering I am an active user of Discord.
I was not aware of this kind of scam but I assume there were scammers roaming around Discord servers which were likely to be the home of people holding cryptocurrency and virtual assets.
Honestly, I assume anyone is trying to scam me as soon as they ask me to try to download something on the internet.

This horror history show how important it is to have the bulk of one's assets store ina cold wallet and away from the internet. It bothers my mind how someone could have over 140k$ stored in a hot wallet like this guy did. Simply irresponsible from him.

These jackpots by hackers and scammers just encourage them further. 

[Dave1]

This type of scam isn’t solely limited to Discord. It’s sad that there are people like this out there but we have to be very careful what we are downloading online. Don’t trust anybody, assume that everybody is a potential scammer until you can prove otherwise, then check again. It’s a minefield of potential wallet drains out there, be vigilant at every turn.

But all social media as well, maybe there are set of criminals that goes and target Discord only as they have a good percentage that they can victimized someone by gaining their trust and then all of a sudden, a link has been shared and someone falls for it.

And specially that we are somewhat experiencing a altcoin season already, this could really be lucrative for this cyber criminals. So it's good that it has been shared here and hopefully there will be no one from our community to be another statistics and then losing their hard earn money from this criminals.

[gunhell16]

We all know that hackers don't choose platforms. As soon as they get an opportunity to attack, they will surely not waste it, no matter what the platform is.
You should always remember that.

If you recall the Slack app, it was also a well-known platform before, but in the end, it was also ruined because scammers often used it,
and hackers also used it for their activities.

[jackpotmaster]

But did you know that this is not new? This may not be as common as X (formerly known as Twitter) hack but we have reported many hacks that someone's discord server would be hacked by hackers and be used to do some malicious things that can lead to theft of victims coins. I even posted some on this forum in the past. It is very possible that it might now be on the rise, people need to be very careful.

It is just another form of social engineering attack, it is absolutely not new or newsworthy.

Thank you for the headsup, considering I am an active user of Discord.

Discord is a very bad place, full of malware and scammers and it violates your privacy too. I would not recommend using Discord on the same machines you use crypto.

[el kaka22]

Unfortunately this has been a far too common thing for years. Even on the last one at 2021 we had scammers at discord and that was a sad situation. Scammers always find a way to make some change and because of that we can't really get anything we want, it is not that great and we can't make it be better. For that reason we need to focus on how to get a better result, it's that simple.

We need to find better projects that are not scams and we need to just avoid these scammers who claim a better life. If you chase that unreasonable return, you will get an unreasonable scammer, it's that simple. These "download this game" type of things are basically hacks, not even scams, so always be careful what you are clicking online.

[TastyChillySauce00]

Discord is so infested with scammers honestly.

Every single time I joined a discord server that is crypto related, there's always scammers out of nowhere disguising themselves as a tech support.
The crazy thing is, it seems they are operating on large scale with automated bots where if you call out their scams, they'd change their discord name and remove their post.

I'd never ever click a link in discord server. I even blocked any incoming friend request because I know most of them are just scammers.

[Accardo]

It's recommendable to download games, trusted or untrusted source, to external storage devices to relieve attack on the primary storage, the main target. In some cases, the games don't get to install completely, it hangs around 90%,  then the attack starts, so taking out the external disk helps interfere, unlike when it's moving directly to the internal storage, you may never be allowed to cancel the installation. The harddisk can later be formated before using it on the PC to avoid any kind of virus or malware spreading on the system, especially when on autorun.

As for infected servers the attackers leverage expired temporary invite links from trusted channel to scam users. To detect malwares, a pop up is convincing, deleting discord completely and running an antivirus scan is a helpful approach. For a glimpse of how this discord infected servers manipulation is engineered, to stay safe, go through this article:

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/hijacked-discord-invite-links-for-multi-stage-malware-delivery/53955/

[X-ray]

It's more of social engineering than anything.

Opening link from some stranger is simply reckless, the thing that I would never do if I were to hold big amount of money.

The thing is, people are reckless at self custody, they store their privkey, and wallet data in their PC even worse unencrypted. They should've used hardware wallet and never store that important information on a PC, one that's connected to internet at that.

[MainIbem]

We all know that hackers don't choose platforms. As soon as they get an opportunity to attack, they will surely not waste it, no matter what the platform is.
You should always remember that.

If you recall the Slack app, it was also a well-known platform before, but in the end, it was also ruined because scammers often used it,
and hackers also used it for their activities.

Yeah, it's not about the platform but being smart enough to fish out scammers on any platform before they make you their victim, scammers or hackers can use any platform they want to, infact they operate on almost all platforms if not all and would patiently wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. Well I know that no one is perfect but we ought to be extra careful and avoid being vulnerable to scammers. Well I love the fact that you acknowledged that they can use any platform, infact there was a point when Telegram was a scam zone, you'll literally get notifications from strange users telling you to invest on shit cryptos they claim have potential and would be compared to Bitcoin in the future, the wise ones knows how to deal with such folks but the ignorant once would always fall victim.

[Promocodeudo]

Yeah, it's not about the platform but being smart enough to fish out scammers on any platform before they make you their victim, scammers or hackers can use any platform they want to, infact they operate on almost all platforms if not all and would patiently wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. Well I know that no one is perfect but we ought to be extra careful and avoid being vulnerable to scammers. Well I love the fact that you acknowledged that they can use any platform, infact there was a point when Telegram was a scam zone, you'll literally get notifications from strange users telling you to invest on shit cryptos they claim have potential and would be compared to Bitcoin in the future, the wise ones knows how to deal with such folks but the ignorant once would always fall victim.

Being able to identify scammers in these social media platforms requires individuals being extremely observant about the antics of scammers, for us not to be victims of scam, we should to an extent know what might likely be the words of this scammers, as for what you said about telegram, dude telegram has never been out of scam, is just that users are now becoming wise, users don't click those their scam links in the form signal shit and some other stuffs, you know learning all this things helps a lot, another thing is being aware of giveaway shit, People has to be more careful about anything giveaway it will help them much even all those people we see commenting under any of those post are scammers too.
We are learning everyday and I must say this, with many things we have been able to learn in the community, the previllege informations, if anyone here get scammed, then such person should be blamed for it.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

"NFT artist Princess Hypio lost $170,000 in crypto and NFTs after a scammer convinced her to download a game on Steam.

The game itself was safe, but an infected server allowed hackers to gain full access to the device and wallets.

This is apparently an avoidable mistake that would have been done if only she was always conscious of her safety at all times. But however, it's quite sad that Princess Hypio had to lose over $170,000, which is actually over 2 Bitcoins in both crypto and NFTs after accidentally trusting a scammer she met on Discord who was able to convinced her to download a game on Steam, and eventually store her money. Because it is actually scenarios like this that makes people never to trust anybody among the crypto community, which is actually bad. Because for this lady to have agreed to download the game he sent her, it's obvious a level of trust must have been built between their two, which ended sadly. And as such, it's only wise if everybody who has this crypto assets on the same device to totally avoid any links been shared to them. Or possibly get a totally different mobile device that they will use for storing only their crypto assets, and totally disconnected from all social medias, apps and online.

[Odogwu-Blockchain]

The hacker only works with those that has the game on steam as you said which is a safe game but the phishing link is the cloned login page of that steam game app. Once this user clicks the link, it will be redirected to the exam same login page the game is where the user can't detect it themselves but assume to be true login.

It's a simple trick, if you are careful enough to always watch out the original URL of any website or app while comparing with the one you received off a stranger on discord, it would be impossible to fall victim easily.

[shinratensei_]

Discord was supposed to be really hard to register into if the discord server has many anti-bot anti-spammer guard. It even requires phone verification, use VPN once and your account got banned but somehow the discord scammers are running rampant as if they got unlimited accounts.
Pretty crazy to me how these scammers just literally everywhere with unlimited resource. Not to mention using sophisticated means like through game installation in steam? I've never ever heard of that.

In this case, the victim probably gives an administrator access to the game which shouldn't happen in the first place.

[BTCOIN_COMADO]

https://cointelegraph.com/news/discord-scams-crypto-nft-theft-social-engineering

Hide your crypto: Infamous ‘try my game’ Discord scam on the rise
An X user known as Princess Hypio said they lost $170,000 in crypto and NFTs to a scammer who infiltrated a Discord server and pretended to have mutual friends.

Brief History of Scams:

"NFT artist Princess Hypio lost $170,000 in crypto and NFTs after a scammer convinced her to download a game on Steam.

The game itself was safe, but an infected server allowed hackers to gain full access to the device and wallets.

How it works:
▪️The hacker infiltrates the Discord community, observes and “gains trust”.
▪️Finds out who has crypto or NFTs.
▪️Offers to play and sends a link with malware.
▪️Result – the hacker gains access to wallets, personal data and assets."
Crypto Headlines AI(C)

That’s a painful reminder of how social engineering plus technical exploits can wipe out years of work in seconds and I am not surprised about that. Beyond the initial scam, I think what makes it even riskier is that many people use the same device for everything. Discord, browsing random sites, testing downloads, checking emails, managing wallets, etc.

The more diverse your online activity on one device, the higher the exposure. Malicious links, infected ad campaigns, or compromised plug-ins don’t need much to slip through and gain persistence. Once the endpoint is compromised, your wallets, logins, and even recovery phrases are all at risk.

I always advice people to separate environments although sometimes I also carelessly use the same device.

One “clean” device (or at least a separate profile) strictly for wallets and sensitive transactions.

Another device for general browsing, downloads, Discord chats, and experiments.

That way, even if your casual-use device is breached, the attacker won’t automatically have a complete access to your assets.

[Wakate]

There has been many different scams on Discord but many people are not aware about them because they don't use discord often time. Hacking of weak servers and dropping a link there by the hackers for members of the server to click and update their crypto portfolio has been what we have been seeing for quite a long time. This is why it's good to have different wallets for keeping your crypto portfolios so in case of hack, it's not going to affect all your holdings due to connecting wallet to different apps and websites. We all need to be conscious about this to prevent loses.

[$crypto$]

Offering to play, there may be an offer where he will be paid or rewarded, especially since he has a position of trust on Discord.

But indeed, fraud on Discord is increasing, not much different from Telegram, where scammers have their nest there. The more communities there are, the more likely there will be infiltrators among the members.

I myself was once offered to become an ambassador for a project and was told to install a game from that link, but I eventually became suspicious.