Cryptocurrency hacker stole $ 4 million in cryptocurrency using wallet photo

Ahad Shams, one of the founders of the Webaverse virtual reality project, shared an interesting story with his Twitter followers. Last year in the fall, he received a call from a man who introduced himself as Mr. Safra, an investor. The stranger said he would like to invest in the Shams metaverse.

a crypto scam stole 4m by just taking a photo of a trust wallet screen, with no seed phrases or any private info in sight pic.twitter.com/yOQGbReF1I

— 0xngmi (aggregatoor arc) (@0xngmi) February 6, 2023

At the end of November, the Webaverse team traveled to Rome to meet with a potential investor and his partner. During the conversation, Safra wanted to make sure that the company had digital assets in its accounts. Wanting to prove the legitimacy of their activities, Shams and his associates transferred about $ 4 million in USD Coin to a new digital wallet called Trust Wallet in the presence of the fraudster. Safra took a photo of the balance, then expressed a desire to talk to his financial advisor and left.

After a while, Shams and his partners discovered that all assets had disappeared from the Trust Wallet, and the potential investor never showed up. Webaverse representatives immediately went to the police to report the theft and also contacted the FBI. But despite all the efforts of law enforcement, the fraudsters were not found.

It is still unclear how the criminals managed to take possession of the company’s funds. Ahad Shams emphasizes that his laptop, like his colleagues' equipment, was not connected to the Internet via public Wi-Fi. In addition, no one publicly disclosed the key to the digital wallet. Shams is confident that the attackers somehow managed to access the vault using a photo of the Trust Wallet crypto wallet balance.

It should be noted that cryptocurrency wallet manufacturers are intensively implementing new security features in their devices. MetaMask recently announced that it will track user transactions to prevent phishing attacks or hacking. The developers have also added the option to display balance, token prices, and track incoming transactions. However, the use of these features is optional.