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Study links transaction-simulation phishing to $3.48M in losses

The arXiv preprint says 4,224 simulation phishing contracts across Ethereum and other chains generated a snapshot mismatch, with 91.5% of losses attributed to Ethereum.

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A July 30 arXiv preprint highlighted transaction-simulation phishing contracts that can appear to show a small balance gain in a wallet preview, while the on-chain execution reroutes the user’s deposit to an attacker-controlled address, CryptoSlate reports.

Using a contract-bytecode detector called SimGuard, the authors identified 4,224 transaction-simulation phishing contracts across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Avalanche, and Polygon. They linked the technique to 5,742 victim addresses and about $3.48 million in historical losses, while noting the loss estimate is an upper bound because some attacker test activity may have been misclassified.

The study attributes 91.5% of the losses to Ethereum and says about 83% of the cross-chain total comes from its largest inferred cluster. The researchers also caution that the findings have not been peer reviewed and include inconsistencies, including conflicting Avalanche contract counts and unresolved observation end points.

Mechanically, the paper explains that simulation takes a pre-signing snapshot of what a transaction is expected to do, but contracts can contain branches that produce different outcomes during that check versus actual execution, including scenarios involving storage changes, timestamp-based behavior, and gas-control differences. It also points to a Jan. 8, 2025 Etherscan transaction that moves about 143.45 ETH through a contract Etherscan labels as phishing.

Latest closeEthereum $1,869.70 ▼0.7%|BNB $591.04 ▲0.6%

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