Recently, the cryptocurrency suffered the largest cyberattack to date. The Bybit exchange was hit by the "largest cryptocurrency heist in history, with approximately $1.5 billion in Ethereum tokens stolen in a matter of hours," Forbes said.
After the Bybit hack, phishing campaigns steal crypto
Security vendor BforeAI said around 600 phishing campaigns surfaced after the Bybit heist, which was intended to steal cryptocurrency from its customers. In the last three weeks, after the news of the biggest crypto scam in history, BforeAI found 596 suspicious domains from 13 different countries.
Dozens of these malicious domains mimicked the cryptocurrency exchange itself (Bybit), most using typosquatting techniques and keywords like “wallet,” “refund,” “information, “recovery,” and “check.”
According to BforeAI, there were also “instances of popular crypto keywords such as ‘metaconnect,’ ‘mining,’ and ‘airdrop,’ as well as the use of free hosting and subdomain registration services such as Netlify, Vercel, and Pages.dev.”
Malicious free domains used for attacks
The use of free hosting services and dynamics is a common practice in this dataset. Many phishing pages are hosted on forums that offer anonymous, quick deployment without asking for domain purchases. Also, the highest number of verified malicious domains were registered in the UK.
After the incident, Bybit assured customers that they wouldn’t lose any money as a result. But the hackers took advantage of this situation and intentionally created a sense of anxiety and urgency via deceptive tactics like ‘fake recovery services and ‘phishing schemes.’ A few phishing websites pretended to be the “Bybit Help Center.”
The end goal was to make victims enter their crypto/Bybit passwords. A few weeks later, campaigns changed from “withdrawals, information, and refunds” through spoof Bybit sites to providing “crypto and training guides” and special rewards to trick potential investors.
Regardless of the change in these crypto and training guides, the campaigns persevered a “connection to the earlier withdrawal scams by including ‘how to withdraw from Bybit guides,’ BforeAI explained. This results in “a flow of traffic between learning resources fakes and withdrawal phishing attempts,” it added.
Bybit has accused North Korean hackers behind the attacks, costing the firm a massive $1.5 billion in stolen crypto. The campaign has contributed to Q1 2025 with an infamous record: a $1.7 billion theft in the first quarter, the highest in history.