Crypto Security Breakthrough: Wallet Drainer Losses Plummet 83% to $84M in 2025
Scammers just got a massive pay cut.
The once-thriving wallet drainer industry—those slick phishing kits that siphoned billions from crypto wallets—just hit a historic low. Losses cratered to $84 million in 2025. That's not just a dip; it's an 83% freefall from previous years.
How the Tide Turned
Security finally caught up. Widespread adoption of transaction simulation tools lets users preview an interaction's outcome before signing. Wallet providers baked in real-time threat detection, flagging malicious contracts the moment they appear. The community got smarter, too—sharing signatures of known drainers faster than scammers could spin up new variants.
The New Defense Playbook
It's a layered approach. Hardware wallets added enhanced permission screens. Major dApps integrated clearer signing requests, stripping away the technical jargon. A collective shift toward self-custody education made 'blind signing' a relic of the past. The result? Attack surfaces shrank dramatically.
The Scammers' Bad Year
Their ROI is in the gutter. Developing new, undetectable drainer code became more expensive and time-consuming, while the window to profit before detection narrowed to hours. The low-hanging fruit is gone, forcing many operators to simply fold—a beautiful example of market forces at work, even in the underworld.
Sure, traditional finance still pats itself on the back for 'secure' systems that freeze your account for three days to prevent a $500 fraud. Meanwhile, crypto's open, user-empowered model is solving billion-dollar attack vectors in real-time. The $84 million figure isn't just a win; it's proof that a decentralized ecosystem can defend itself—and win.
Crypto Phishing Losses Spike During Market Rallies, Report Warns
Despite the steep decline, the report cautioned that phishing activity has not disappeared. Instead, losses tracked closely with broader market cycles.
Periods of heightened onchain activity were followed by spikes in phishing incidents, while quieter markets saw losses ease.
The third quarter of 2025, which coincided with Ethereum’s strongest rally of the year, recorded the highest losses at $31 million. August and September alone accounted for nearly 29% of total annual losses.
Scam Sniffer described phishing as a “probability function of user activity,” noting that higher transaction volumes tend to increase the pool of potential victims.
Monthly losses ranged from just $2.04 million in December, the calmest month, to $12.17 million in August, when trading activity peaked.
Scam Sniffer 2025 Report is out!
Crypto phishing losses dropped 83% — $494M → $83.85M, with 106K victims (-68%).
But the threat followed the market: Q3 rally = highest losses. EIP-7702 exploitation emerged post-Pectra.
Full report
https://t.co/qziSEjiEVx
The largest single incident of the year involved a $6.5 million theft in September tied to a malicious Permit signature.
Permit and Permit2 approvals remained the most effective tools for attackers, accounting for 38% of losses in cases exceeding $1 million.
The data suggests that approval-based exploits continue to pose a major risk, particularly for users interacting with unfamiliar applications.
The report also highlighted the emergence of new attack vectors. Following Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade, attackers began abusing EIP-7702–based malicious signatures, which enable multiple harmful actions to be bundled into a single user approval.
Two such incidents in August resulted in $2.54 million in losses, underscoring how quickly attackers adapt to protocol changes.
Crypto Phishers Shift From Big Heists to Mass Retail Attacks
Large-scale attacks became less frequent, with only 11 cases above $1 million in 2025, down from 30 the previous year. At the same time, attackers appeared to shift toward lower-value, higher-volume campaigns.
The average loss per victim fell to $790, pointing to a broader focus on retail users rather than isolated, high-profile thefts.
As reported, an attacker has siphoned funds from hundreds of crypto wallets across ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)–compatible networks, draining small amounts from each address in what onchain investigator ZachXBT described as a broad, low-value operation.
While individual losses were limited, typically under $2,000 per wallet, the incident’s scope points to a coordinated campaign rather than an isolated breach.
Meanwhile, crypto-related losses from hacks and cybersecurity exploits fell sharply in December, dropping 60% month-on-month to about $76 million.
