Etherscan hides zero-value token transfers to deter address poisoning attacks

2 years ago

Address poisoning is simply a phishing scam that tin impact users who person received unwanted tokens and don't cheque their addresses cautiously erstwhile sending crypto.

Etherscan hides zero-value token transfers to deter code  poisoning attacks

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Collect this nonfiction arsenic an NFT

According to an Apr. 10 post from Etherscan, the blockchain explorer has disabled the show of zero-value token transfers connected its website by default. From present on, users indispensable manually power connected the show from the website's mounting page. Etherscan says it made the update to deter "address poisoning" attacks that person phished and spammed unsuspecting users. 

"Preventing scams and attacks successful a neutral and scalable mode is an infinite cat-and-mouse game… delight consciousness escaped to stock your feedback arsenic we proceed to improve."

Address poisoning is simply a benignant of crypto scam wherever an attacker sends a token with near-zero oregon nary worth to a user's code to "poison" it. Afterward, the transaction volition beryllium recorded successful the brushed oregon hard wallet's past and tin beryllium selected erstwhile making transfers. The intent of the scam is to instrumentality the idiosyncratic into sending coins to the scam code by mistake. To bash this, hackers usage blase bundle to make scam addresses that look precise akin to "poisoned" addresses, with the aforesaid fewer opening oregon ending characters.

That said, the scam is lone classified arsenic phishing. Neither the unwanted coins nor the addresses receiving specified tokens tin compromise users' funds. However, unwanted nonfungible tokens, oregon NFTs, tin perchance compromise an code done interactions, specified arsenic moving it to antithetic accounts.

Sample of zero worth tokens that volition beryllium hidden by Etherscan

Blockchain hardware wallet steadfast Ledger suggests users fell their unsolicited NFT collections upon receipt. While code poisoning cannot beryllium stopped, Ledger recommends users refrain from retrieving deposit oregon destination addresses from their transaction past and ever double-check that each quality of the destination code matches the input code erstwhile sending crypto. 

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