This appears to be what’s referred to as an handle poisoning assault. It really works like this:
The attacker picks an handle that has been used a number of occasions and holds a substantial amount of cash (over 5 BTC on this case). They then craft an handle utilizing a brute-force search that they management however that begins and ends with the identical characters because the sufferer’s handle, and from this particular handle ship the sufferer a small amount of cash. The hope is that the following time the sufferer needs to make use of their handle they copy it from their transaction historical past and unintentionally copy the attacker’s handle, who then receives funds supposed for the sufferer.
Some methods you possibly can defend your self from this assault:
- Do not reuse addresses.
- Do not copy addresses out of your transaction historical past.
- All the time verify each character of your handle, not simply the beginning and finish.