Dusting your history with lookalike addresses so you copy the wrong recipient next time.

A signing device that never touches the internet, used with QR or SD transaction flows.

Addresses permitted to mint or trade early. Also a phishing lure word in fake mint sites.

A personal code shown in legitimate exchange emails so fakes are easier to spot.

Prefer limited allowances and periodic revokes over infinite approvals to every new dapp.

Miniscript and descriptor wallets that require several keys to spend.

An attacker who exploits for profit or disruption without disclosure.

Approving a hardware-wallet payload you cannot human-read. Prefer clear-signing when available.

Exploiting validators, contracts, or message verification on a cross-chain bridge. Historically the largest loss class.

The chance a cross-chain lock-and-mint system is hacked or halted, stranding or forging assets.

Paid responsible disclosure for vulnerabilities, often via Immunefi in crypto.

A small watch address used to detect unexpected movements early.

Backlogs during stress. A signal to watch solvency and your own custody choices.

An automatic pause when flows or losses exceed thresholds.

Showing human-readable transaction details on a secure screen before you approve.

Malware that replaces a copied address with an attacker address.

Mobile links that open wallet sheets with malicious payloads.

Multiple controls: audits, monitoring, limits, timelocks, and circuit breakers together.

Deceiving a user into authorizing account delegation to code that can exercise unintended control over the account.

Using a dedicated machine or phone for signing and a different one for browsing CT.

Tiny deposits used to track wallets or poison address histories.

A vault-accounting attack in which manipulation of assets per share and rounding can cause a depositor to receive too few shares.

Actors posing as MetaMask, Ledger, or exchange support in DMs. Real support never needs your seed.

Mathematical proofs about contract behavior, complementary to audits and tests.

Send coins to receive double. Always a scam.

Passing a malicious proposal, sometimes with flash-loaned votes, to drain a treasury.

Operators who exploit then negotiate returns. Legal and ethical status is messy.

Maximum value kept online for operations. Excess should be cold or MPC.

Exchange or custodian loss when hot keys are compromised. Cold storage and MPC reduce but do not erase this risk.

Code that cannot be changed after deploy. Safer against admin rugs, harder to patch bugs.

Fake handles that clone influencers or founders to push drainers or fake mints.

Pause guardians, war rooms, and user alerts planned before a hack, not during one.

Even hardware users can be phished via companion apps and blind signing. Verify on device.

Channel backups, watchtowers, and inbound liquidity matter as much as on-chain self-custody habits.

Alerts on anomalous mints, drains, or oracle moves for protocol and user defense.

Multi-party computation custody that splits signing so no single machine holds a full key.

Require multiple people and geographic or device separation for treasury keys.

Losses from compromised signer devices, fake UI, or social engineering rather than a smart-contract bug. Central to Bybit-era exchange thefts.

Manipulating a price feed to borrow, liquidate, or mint unfairly.

Uniswap's signature-based allowance system that reduces some approval friction and introduces new signing surfaces.

Tricking you into signing a bad transaction or handing over a seed via fake sites, DMs, or ads.

The romance-investment scam pattern that funnels victims into fake crypto platforms.

Building a Bitcoin transaction on a hot machine and signing it on cold hardware.

Malicious QR codes at events or in slides that point to drainers.

Caps on how fast value can leave a protocol, buying time during exploits.

Fraudsters who claim they can recover hacked funds for an upfront fee.

A contract flaw where an external call re-enters before state updates, used in classic DeFi hacks.

Independent parties can rebuild the same binary from source, raising trust in wallet releases.

Removing a spender's allowance via Etherscan, Revoke.cash, or a wallet tool.

Long social engineering that ends in fake investment apps. A major fiat-to-crypto crime pattern.

Underlying collateral pledged twice off-chain while tokens still trade as if unique.

Dust tokens that lure you to a fake site to 'claim' or 'revoke'. Do not interact.

A multisig that can pause or upgrade an L2 in emergencies. A trust assumption to understand.

Any screenshot, cloud backup, or support scam that exposes the mnemonic. Funds are gone once it is used.

An NFT (and sometimes ERC-20) permission that lets an operator move every token you own in that contract.

Asking you to sign a typed-data message that grants operatorship or transfers assets.

Attackers port your phone number to intercept SMS 2FA. Use app or hardware 2FA for exchanges.

Guardians who can help rotate a smart-wallet key if you lose the primary device.

A delay that lets users exit before a risky upgrade lands.