An alarming new scam has been targeting ether holders, as hackers send users an email claiming to be the Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, in order to steal funds from users. Buterin recently addressed the growing issue on Twitter, where he confirmed that malicious attackers were impersonating him to exploit vulnerable ether newbies into sending him their funds.
In a Tweet, Buterin warned his followers to not trust any emails claiming to be from him that required the user send their ether funds to him.
According to the Ethereum founder, the impersonators claim in their email that the fraudulent Buterin’s laptop died before he had the opportunity to ask for ether funds and that he would return it after he is able to access his cold wallet funds.
Cryptocurrency-related hacks and scams have become increasingly popular. Especially since most cryptocurrencies grew exponentially in value over the course of 2017.
Earlier this month, there were a bunch of malicious impostor software programs floating around on Google which claimed to be Binance. While all suspicious links eventually referred users to the official Binance website, it did so using a referral link.
For the interested user, all known Ethereum-related scams and hacks have been made available on the Ethereum Scam Database.
Until such time that the latest scam is dealt with, users are advised to ignore any emails claiming to be from Vitalik Buterin asking for their ether funds.
