Source / Guardian of the HarvestIn a daring cyber heist, $1 million worth of cryptocurrency was brazenly stolen from AI-powered trading dApp Harvest Keeper.
The theft took place at 16:00 (UTC) on March 17, when the cyberthieves took advantage of a privileged “getamount” function to loot €709.000 in USDT deposited by users.
With all the hallmarks of a classic team mat, the crooks didn't stop there.
Dissatisfied with the revenue of less than a million, the perpetrators then deployed ice phishing attacks on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon.
Ice Phishing attacks work by tricking users into interacting with and signing a fraudulent smart contract, allowing thieves to steal funds.
No doubt, by leveraging the Harvest Keeper app, the attackers were able to extract €219,000 from users' pockets through tricks and deception.
The crooks resorted to desperate ice phishing
Harvest Keeper was a dApp with impressive AI trading technology, giving users the ability to remove the human factor and generate automatic profit.
Positioned to take advantage of the burgeoning AI narrative, Harvest Keeper managed to gain major traction in a short time.
However, like many scam schemes, the offer was too good to be true, promising 4,81% daily rewards and 101% ROI in 3 weeks.
Despite the warning signs, many in the crypto community were caught off guard.
The boldest cryptocurrency heist of 2023?
The unsophisticated attack has already been attributed to the Harvest Keeper team by mainstream outlets in the crypto news space.
But many will wonder why a publicly misled team would undertake such a flagrant theft of user funds, especially given the relatively small loot.
This incident wouldn't even make the Top 25 Crypto Hacks of 2022, a year that saw Wormbridge hit $321 million and a compromised Wintermute hot wallet sold out for $160 million.
Cryptonews.com has reached out to founder Markus Peters, CEO Martin Fabre (formerly CoinMetrics and Ripple) and CTO Genry Montgomery for comment.