All terms

Glossary

Phishing

Social engineering attack that tricks a user into approving a malicious transaction or revealing credentials.

Phishing in Web3 looks different from phishing in Web2. The end goal isn't a stolen password, it's a wallet signature.

Common patterns:

  • Fake mint sites: the attacker copies a legitimate project's mint page on a near-identical domain, and any wallet that connects gets a malicious approval prompt.
  • Malicious airdrops: a token appears in a wallet, the user goes to claim, and the claim function drains approved assets.
  • Compromised Discord and X accounts: project mods or founder accounts get hijacked and used to post phishing links to their own community.
  • Address poisoning: attacker sends a 0-value transaction from a vanity address that looks like one of the user's known counterparties, hoping the user copy-pastes the wrong address from history.

The defense is not technical, it is transaction simulation before signing, hardware-wallet display reading every time, and a healthy paranoia about anything that creates time pressure.

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