Scammers are taking advantage of YouTube's comments section, sharing seed phrases to lure greedy people into a multi-signature wallet scam.
Bad actors seem to have found a new way to exploit crypto users by sharing seed phrases, tricking victims into trying to steal money from a multi-name wallet written, only to fall victim to the scam itself.
In a blog post on December 23, the licensed cybersecurity company in Russia Kaspersky revealed a scam after your comment appeared under finance YouTube video. The user shared their seed phrase and asked for help transferring money from their wallet, which experts quickly described as suspicious.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said in an X post that “acquiring crypto through a private key or hardware wallet is a bad idea,” citing “several cases” where this has happened.
A seed phrase is a special sequence of words needed to access a cryptocurrency wallet, and sharing it openly can lead to theft. Kaspersky notes that the comment appeared to be from a beginner, with other similar comments following, all from “newly created accounts.” These messages contained seed phrases and requests for help with money transfers.
In the scam, a thief accessing the wallet found it full of Tether (USDT). However, in order to withdraw funds, the thief needed TRON (TRX).
“Unfortunately, the wallet doesn't have enough TRX, so the thief tries to transfer TRX from their own personal wallet – only to find that the tokens they transferred expired immediately in a completely different third wallet.”
Kaspersky
The trick lies in the multi-signature setup of the wallet, the analysts say, adding that these types of wallets require approval from multiple parties to authorize transactions. As a result, even if the scammer paid the necessary fees, they could not steal the money.
Kaspersky warned that this scam is an example of how scammers can manipulate thieves, encouraging users to avoid seed phrases and beware of similar schemes. In June, the Biden administration impose sanctions on 12 top executives at Kaspersky Lab, citing cybersecurity risks, a day after announcing plans to ban the Russian company's antivirus software sales.
