A large portion of Firefox users fell victim to a bogus add-on that was disguised as a legitimate extension of a cryptocurrency hardware portfolio called SafePal. One of the victims, named Cali, was shocked to find that all the funds went into the hands of the scammers: I was deeply in shock… I saw my latest transactions and saw that $ 4,000 of my funds had been transferred to another portfolio. I couldn’t believe it was an add-on distributed in the Mozilla Firefox add-on list.
It is unclear how many other Firefox users were deprived of their funds after downloading the malicious extension. The add-on was operational since mid-February before being recently removed. A lot of negative reviews from unhappy users should have been a warning sign.
The user who was scammed also claimed that the police are unable to track down the hacker. Potential victims are tricked into entering their password recovery phrases, making it extremely easy for hackers to steal their cryptocurrencies. Furthermore, the phishing domain associated with the fraudulent add-on is still active.
Hacks and scams remain prevalent in the cryptocurrency industry. As reported by U.Today, Bitcoin.org, the first Bitcoin website registered by Satoshi Nakamoto, suffered a security breach four days ago. Earlier this month, a fake YouTube stream of Apple’s annual event promoting a bitcoin giveaway reached around 170,000 viewers before it closed.
