Web3 and other blockchain-powered markets are still in their infancy, with most of the underlying technologies, economic models and coding architectures still being improved, tested and updated. While this is normal for an emerging market and technology, there are always loopholes that bad actors can exploit and target to attack their victims. In particular, with social engineering tactics, scammers manipulate users’ emotions and create a sense of trust and urgency.
At the beginning of 2023, bug bounty platform Immunefi estimated that the Web3 ecosystem lost around $3.9 billion to scams and hacking attacks in 2022, with decentralized finance (DeFi) being the most targeted sector, suffering 80% of the calculated losses.
Losses by quarter in 2022. Source: Immunefi Report
In the ever-evolving landscape of blockchain technology, two pivotal issues stand out that demand users’ attention and solution-oriented approach. The first revolves around the stealthy seizure of token approvals, often unbeknownst to actual contract owners. This practice leverages complex contract features to manipulate token approvals without alerting the rightful owner, thereby compromising the security and integrity of their digital assets.
The second significant hurdle before Web3 users comes in the form of scam tokens. These fake digital assets aim to mimic popular projects and deceive investors. When popular Web3 projects share the contract addresses of their tokens upon release on social media, users can go to a marketplace and find the token by its contract address. At this stage, malicious individuals can create fake tokens with names and addresses that are similar to the real ones, which may pop up in the search results on a marketplace and attract unsuspecting victims.
In view of the rising number and variety of attacks and scam tactics, a team of developers has been hard at work on Web3 Antivirus – a browser extension that detects and alerts users about all of the illicit activities mentioned above. With the release of the latest W3A 0.8 upgrade, users can now benefit from the most up-to-date protection against scammers.
Latest update of this Web3 security tool addresses new scams
To make the Web3 journey safer, users can leverage specialized security tools such as Web3 Antivirus. This antivirus solution functions as a browser extension that can integrate with Chrome, Brave, Firefox and Edge.
It performs real-time analysis of smart contracts and tokens, detecting the most common risks and vulnerabilities, such as ice phishing attacks, dangerous signing requests, frozen funds attacks and more.
To ensure that a transaction is risk-free, Web3 Antivirus monitors all smart contracts and stimulates the transaction flow to anticipate the outcome.
Recently, Web3 Antivirus released its latest update, W3A 0.8, which addresses some of the latest scamming schemes, including alerts when scam tokens are detected and the ability to revoke smart contract approvals when exploitation has been registered.
Source: Web3 Antivirus
By adding Web3 Antivirus to their browser, users can get rid of smart contracts that use sneaky methods to allow their owners to take control of users’ wallet token approval without their knowledge. The extension easily detects this scheme and immediately notifies users with a warning.
The latest update also brings many improvements to the extension’s dashboard, for example the Wallet Health Score indicator that shows the current state of the assets stored in user’s wallets. Web3 Antivirus now provides users with an efficient solution for maintaining token security. For example, the tool groups all token approvals into a special section of the dashboard where users can revoke approvals at any time in just a few clicks. With this feature, they can take full control over their tokens and forget about unauthorized access.
Source: Web3 Antivirus
With the latest update of Web3 Antivirus, users can now protect themselves from a wide range of scams, including the most recent ones.
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