Original title: Obviously it is an airdrop, why is the coin gone?

The word "airdrop" is no stranger to many people who have played battle royale games. In the game, there will be airdrop supplies at a fixed time, but the location of the airdrop is randomly dropped, which often attracts a large wave of "dream chasing" People" go to fight for the pick-up, so encounters often occur around the airdrops. Even if they win the encounters and get the airdrop supplies, they are often harvested by other ambush players. While bringing high returns, it also often contains huge risks.

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What is Virtual Currency Airdrop

Friends who pay attention to virtual currency should have heard of "candy" and "airdrop", so what are candy and airdrop? What is the difference between the two?

In order to build momentum, the blockchain project party distributes "free lunch" (candies and airdrops) to cultivate loyal users, quickly attract more people to participate, and increase the influence of the project itself, which is a bit similar to taxi-hailing software in previous years , The "money-burning marketing" of the food delivery platform, so candy and airdrops are essentially promotional costs for quickly gaining the market.

candy

Candy refers to the tokens rewarded by the blockchain project party to early users. After the project is launched on the exchange, the gifted tokens can be directly realized on the exchange.

Reward method: generally registration rewards and invitation rewards, rewarded tokens are directly distributed to personal accounts, and some project parties require to join the project’s community (WeChat group, telegram group, etc.), usually the participation method is relatively simple.

Security Risk:

airdrop

airdrop

Although "candy" and "airdrop" both distribute tokens to users for free, in fact, strictly speaking, there are certain differences between the two. The biggest difference is the distribution method of the two. The candy distribution is directly given to the participating users, and the airdrop is when the project party chooses a time node, and according to the asset distribution of a certain token at that time, tokens are given to potential users in a certain proportion.

There are two differences between airdrops and candy:

1. The airdrop is not for all users, but for some designated potential users.

2. The number of tokens donated by the airdrop is not constant, but is determined according to the ownership ratio of each user.

Now many project parties call their candy distribution activities as airdrops, so now airdrops and candies have been confused.

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Real case analysis

The scammer first pretended to be the official airdrop of Sushiswap, and then pretended to be the official imToken wallet, inducing users to download the fraudulent APP and import it into their wallets. After that, the scammers obtained the user's private key in the background and transferred the virtual currency in the wallet.

Notice sent to users by fake customer service

1. The scammers used Sushiswap's official airdrop information and its official popularity to make their own airdrop page, and pretended to be customer service in the WeChat group to guide users to participate. Not only that, in order to get closer to users, the customer service uses beautiful women or handsome men as avatars.

2. The scammer packaged all the resources of Sushiswap's official project, official website, contract open source code, promotional slogans, etc. into their own materials to induce users.

3. Attract users to enter Telegram, QQ, WeChat groups, and send announcements (fraud information) to users one-on-one through WeChat. If you doubt this, they will send you a good official announcement picture. Users are on the real official website There is no announcement made by the scammer on the Internet, so the scammer will inform the user that the token will not be issued to the outside world, and only rewards will be issued to participating users. Many users believe this explanation.

Liar P's imToken official announcement

4. In order to strengthen the authenticity of this project, scammers will post various pictures (for example: pictures that users have obtained tokens issued, official project pictures), and will also use voice or official 400 calls (fake ), guide the user to enter the sent link or download the imToken wallet.

In fact, the downloaded wallet is a counterfeit wallet developed by the project party itself, not the official wallet of imToken. After downloading, the user can create a new wallet and transfer the corresponding amount of principal, or import the private key of his original wallet to receive the information advertised by the platform. The airdrop benefits, and at this time, the scammer has already obtained the user's private key.

5. After obtaining the user's private key, the scammer can basically control the funds in the account and transfer the funds in the user's wallet at any time.

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Fraud

Using airdrops as a gimmick to defraud users of their private keys is a new type of fraud method for criminals. Generally speaking, they have to go through the following steps:

1. The project party issues tokens.

2. Make the official website or APP of the project. Some scammers will directly imitate the official website of a well-known project, but the domain name is slightly different, which is hard to see unless you look carefully. The scammers will also guide users to visit the fake official website by purchasing advertising space and bidding rankings on search websites;

3. Make relevant publicity materials and package the airdrop project. For example, white papers, business plans, and media propaganda;

4. Establish major media promotion channels, prepare telegram groups, QQ groups, WeChat groups, Twitter, Youtub accounts, and publicize and distribute the project materials on the above major platforms, especially in telegram groups, because of its anonymity and privacy , to evade the investigation of the regulatory authorities;

5. Guide users to download and register fake wallet APPs, import their own wallets or create a wallet-type account;

6. Publicize in major media channels in the name of free airdrops;

7. Shut down projects, transfer assets, disband relevant communities, destroy evidence, and run away directly.

safety reminder

safety reminder

Zhifan Technology Security Team reminds everyone:

1. When encountering an airdrop project, it is necessary to understand and compare it through multiple channels. You can check online first, and ask friends to find out. If you see that the information on this official website is very rough and does not support multilingual environments, it is likely to be a fake official website, which can be distinguished through the domain name.

2. The announcement of project activities should be checked from the official website. If there is no official information, it may be a counterfeit project. Recently, the Zhifan security team received related cases where scammers induced users to download fake wallet apps to steal assets, that is to say, scammers took advantage of the popularity of imToken wallets and forged a fake imToken official website (fake: imtokenx.im; real: token.im) also pretended to be imToken customer service to publish false official information, and induced users to scan the QR code to download and recharge the fake imToken wallet on the grounds of receiving airdrop tokens for free, using the fake wallet to commit fraud.

3. Do not open unknown links to receive airdrops. If you want to download the relevant APP, you must download it from the official website.

4. Do not import the mnemonic phrase or private key of your own wallet to an unfamiliar wallet APP.

5. When you want to invest more funds to buy tokens to get more airdrops, you must be cautious and pay attention to rational investment.