Hackers hit top crypto data websites amid crypto meltdown

LONDON: As the crypto market suffered a meltdown, several top crypto data websites were hit by cyber attacks where a malicious pop-up prompted users to connect their crypto wallets.

Crypto data websites Etherscan, CoinGecko, DeFi Pulse and others reported such phishing attacks, reports CoinDesk.

The phishing attack appears to come from a domain displaying the Bored Ape Yacht Club logo.A

"The situation is caused by a malicious ad script by Coinzilla, a crypto ad network - we have disabled it now but there may be some delay due to CDN caching. We are monitoring the situation further. Do stay on alert and don't connect your Metamask on CoinGecko," CoinGecko said in a tweet on Saturday.

In a tweet, Etherscan urged users to "not confirm any transactions" that popped up on its website.

"We've received reports of phishing popups via a 3rd party integration and are currently investigating. Please be careful not to confirm any transactions that pop up on the website," Etherscan said.

The phishing attack on crypto data websites came as stablecoins like Terra Luna crashed and Coinbase suffered a huge outage.

Earlier, leading crypto exchange Coinbase suffered a major outage amid crypto mayhem especially with the cryptocurrency Terra Luna, heightening fears among the investors.

The Coinbase outage came as Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, suspended trading of Terraform Labs' Terra (Luna) and TerraUSD (UST) tokens, which crashed 98 per cent, wiping out the life savings of its investors.

On Thursday, over $275 billion were wiped off from global crypto market cap within 24 hours and Bitcoin dropped to nearly $27,000, a level it saw in December 2020.

The world's second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum joined the cryptocurrency crash, plummeting in value by 20 per cent.