On September 21, 2023, billionaire investor Mark Cuban experienced financial losses amounting to $870,000 US dollars due to a malicious MetaMask hot wallet. Hot wallets, popular among cryptocurrency traders, present inherent risks from phishing scams and social engineering. After being contacted by an unnamed individual, Cuban remarked that he was certain he had downloaded a polluted version of the MetaMask wallet. Reports from DL News confirm that Ethereum movements from Cuban’s second wallet account were first picked up by the pseudonym WazzCrypto.
The digital currency awareness campaign was recently blighted by a notable figure falling victim to bureaucratic fraud, shining light on the possible risks of storing crypto digitally rather than on a hardware wallet. Of course, software requests like MetaMask must always emanate from reliable vendors to ensure security; whilst 3rd party intermediaries, much like mortgages, need to have their solvency carefully considered. Upheaval in block-based buckrunners are on a continuous surge, {{ e.g. FTX, Block Fi, Three Arrows Capital }}, pointing to the inquisition of safeguarding significant cryptocurrency funds outside of an exposed hot wallet system.