GoPlus: Beware of Common Inscription Scams
User security leader GoPlus has discovered a variety of scams utilizing inscriptions that are flourishing, and has compiled the following typical attack cases involving inscriptions.Author: GoPlus
As the price of ORDI breaks historical highs, with a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion and an increase of tens of thousands of times, the Bitcoin ecosystem and various BRC20 inscriptions have entered a frenzied bull market. User security leader GoPlus has discovered a proliferation of scams utilizing inscriptions. Below are typical attack cases involving inscriptions; users are advised to be cautious during transactions to avoid financial losses.
Phishing Websites
Scam groups have imitated and forged the currently popular inscription wallet platform Unisat. The official address of Unisat is https://unisat.io, while the scam group used the domain https://unisats.io, which only differs by one letter, making it difficult for users to distinguish. Subsequently, the group purchased Google keyword search services, causing users searching for "Unisat" to first see the phishing website, luring them to click. Many users were deceived and lost Ethereum and Bitcoin as a result.
Fake and Real Inscriptions
Although inscription trading is very popular, many trading infrastructures are still not well developed. For example, on the trading platform with the domain https://evm.ink/tokens, when users click in, they encounter a large number of inscriptions with the same name, making it difficult for many users to distinguish the specific protocol differences, leading them to buy the wrong assets.
Additionally, in cases where the "p" field protocol is the same, scammers add invalid fields to forge real inscription series. This type of deceptive inscription is very subtle, and if users are not careful, they may fall victim to scams.
Not only token-type inscriptions but also NFT-type inscriptions face similar issues. Scammers can easily inscribe the same image, while the authenticity of an NFT is merely distinguished by its serial number. Therefore, when purchasing, it is essential to verify whether the serial number is within the series of the intended purchase. Similar scam tactics were also very common in the early NFT market on Ethereum.
Mint Traps
This is a new type of scam. Due to the current surge of inscription activities on many public chains, users often receive a large number of new inscription targets in a short period. Scam teams exploit users' FOMO psychology by constructing Mint contracts on some obscure chains, prompting users to interact. Ultimately, users will find that what they receive is not an inscription but an NFT. Moreover, scammers set high purchase taxes in the interactive contracts, causing users to unknowingly lose their assets.
Taking the inscription on the Sui chain as an example: https://suiexplorer.com/object/0xdd9272210c44244c3dea8107a5ab4e40600ff1ff12f9f8161feb43f1770ebf63, this is actually an NFT disguised as an inscription. Each time a user mints one, they pay a portion of SUI to this object. In just one hour, the scammers received over 5,000 SUI tokens.
Dangerous Hex
Recently, GoPlus has also noticed many dangerous Mint messages in various user communities, as illustrated by this group chat screenshot:
Often, once such messages are released, users are eager to follow the instructions. Many users even use some inscription script tool websites to directly copy and paste their private keys and transaction-related information, then begin executing in bulk.
This behavior is extremely dangerous because scam groups can easily construct JSON fields to transfer inscriptions and encode them as hex for users to inscribe. After completing the inscription, users' inscription assets are at risk of being stolen. Furthermore, they can set the minted token objects to their own deployed fake inscription tokens, leading users to discover that the inscriptions they received are not what they originally intended after spending high gas fees.
