Crypto glossary
Phishing
Phishing is a scam in which attackers pose as a trusted brand or person to trick victims into revealing passwords or seed phrases or signing transactions.
Phishing relies on deception rather than technical skill. The attacker sends a message or builds a website that imitates something familiar, such as an exchange login page, a wallet support chat or a project's official account, and pushes the victim to act quickly. The goal is to capture credentials, a seed phrase or a signature.
In crypto, common lures include fake airdrop claim pages, cloned DeFi front ends promoted through search ads, hijacked social media accounts and emails warning of a security problem with a hardware wallet. Leaked customer databases make these campaigns more convincing, because the messages can include real names and addresses. Many modern phishing sites connect to a wallet drainer that empties the account once the user signs.
No legitimate company will ever ask for a seed phrase. Typing addresses manually or using bookmarks, checking domains carefully and reading what a wallet asks you to sign remain the most effective defences.
Example
A user searching for a popular DEX clicks a sponsored result that looks identical to the real site, connects a wallet and signs an approval, and minutes later the tokens are gone.
Related terms
Latest articles on Phishing
- Solana Co-Founder Warns Phishing Is Crypto’s Biggest Security Threat
- Foundation Probes Data Leak After 23,000 Phishing Attempts Target Users
- Coinbase Phishing Scammer Gets 4-12 Years for $16M Scheme
- Critical Brevo Security Flaw Exposes 347K Trezor Subscribers to Phishing Attack
- Trezor And BitBox Flag Phishing Attempts Following Suspected Third‑Party Compromises
