Digital Wallet

Story: Operation Asterix Exposes 885,000 Phone Numbers Targeting Binance and Ledger Users

By Evie Vavasseur

1 / 15

Fake Apps, Seed Phrases, and a Kraken Checker Tool. Attackers built fake versions of Ledger, Trezor, and Exodus — three of the most trusted names in…

2 / 15

A Pattern of Costly Incidents. Operation Asterix didn't come out of nowhere. The crypto industry has been bleeding from phishing…

3 / 15

A massive crypto phishing operation just got exposed. Rapid7 researchers uncovered a campaign they're calling Operation Asterix — and the numbers are ugly.

4 / 15

The scale here is hard to ignore. Rapid7 analysts Anna Sirokova and Jan Recinsky found 5,576 Binance accounts already queued up and ready to be hit.

5 / 15

The mechanics are pretty straightforward, and that's kind of what makes it so dangerous.

6 / 15

But the operation didn't stop at fake apps. Rapid7 also found a checker tool built specifically for Kraken.

7 / 15

Artificial intelligence played a role here too. The report flagged AI tools being used to automate parts of the attack — generating fake support emails at scale, bulk-validating…

8 / 15

Operation Asterix didn't come out of nowhere. The crypto industry has been bleeding from phishing for years, and the losses keep stacking up.

9 / 15

See also: Hyperliquid Trader Loses $24 Million in 12 Seconds as 50,000 Ether Short Gets Liquidated

10 / 15

Trezor disclosed a breach back in August involving 14,000 users' data, tied to a compromise at logistics firm ShipMonk.

11 / 15

There's also the $400,000 taken through fake Uniswap ads — attackers impersonating a DeFi platform through paid placements, catching users who thought they were clicking on…

12 / 15

The broader picture isn't great. Phishing and social engineering scams accounted for $306 million out of $482 million in total sector losses in the first quarter, per blockchain…

13 / 15

Fake Ledger. Fake Trezor. Fake Exodus. Fake support calls. Fake emails. The playbook hasn't changed much — it's just gotten faster and more targeted, and now it's got AI doing…

14 / 15

Read also: US Debt Hits $40 Trillion, Sparking Bitcoin Surge Amid Market Turmoil

15 / 15

Cointelegraph reached out to Rapid7 analysts for more details on the campaign's target filtering and specific vulnerabilities. No response yet at time of publication.

The Currency Analytics

Want the full story?