Popular Ethereum wallet interface MyEtherWallet (MEW) has suffered a domain name system (DNS) attack that allowed a hacker to redirect users to a malicious version of the website and phish their private keys.
MyEtherWallet is widely used for sending money to crowdsales, and conducting many more day-to-day transactions that involve sending ether or ERC20 tokens.
The news came into limelight after a Reddit user posted asking everyone to switch off their google public DNC {8.8.8.8/ 8.8.4.4} as it has been compromised. A total of 180 transactions has been recorded in this hijack. 215 ETH were phished to an unknown wallet named ??“Fake_Phishing899” ?which took only two and a half hours.
A user posted a thread on MyEtherWallet Reddit entitled “Think I got scammed/phished/hacked”. TheMyEtherWallet official website showed that the connection is not secure. The user continued,
“Even though every part of my body told me not to try and log in, I did. As soon as I logged in, there was a countdown for about 10 seconds and A tx was made sending the available money I had on the wallet to another wallet.”
In no time, MyEtherWallet took to twitter to confirm the attack.
Michael, a Reddit User said,
“MyEtherWallet suddenly switched from the CloudFront CDN to one Russian IP address. I’d be careful until more information is revealed.”
Polezo, another Reddit user said,
“This type of attack is not unique to crypto. DNS hijacking has happened to banks as well. Even local versions of Google, Paypal and Microsoft have been hijacked before.”
Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont explained thatMyEtherWallet website was compromised on a DNS level due to a hijack of Amazon’s internet domain service used to reroute web traffic.
However, users who accessed the fraudulent website using a hardware wallet such as Trezor were protected from the private key hack, though it’s possible that the malicious website could have replaced the address to which they were attempting to send their coins with a false one controlled by the hacker.
For added security, it’s a wise idea to download a browser extension that maintains a blacklist of malicious websites. EtherAddressLookup and MetaMask are two popular options for Chrome users. These tools will not guarantee protection from phishing scams, but they provide an extra layer of protection disabling the hackers to make a quick hack.
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