Newsletter #45

This week in Forta! Forta launches the Attack Detector 2.0 alongside BlockSec and Nethermind. Taking a closer look at October’s scam landscape. Scam Vendors pose a unique threat to Web3. What’s the deal with rake tokens?

Forta launches the Attack Detector 2.0 alongside BlockSec and Nethermind. The relaunch of the Attack Detector is thanks to a collaboration between BlockSec and Nethermind, who worked with the Forta Foundation to merge Forta’s and BlockSec’s Attack Detectors, giving users the best of both worlds. This new Attack Detector has significantly increased precision and recall which enables automated incident response solutions like Hacken’s Extractor and OpenZeppelin’s Defender to become viable. The Attack Detector is now available as a Premium Feed for $399 per month.

Taking a closer look at October’s scam landscape. Dive into the October scam report as told by Forta’s Scam Detector which discovered over 34k unique scammer addresses last month. A silent killer of Web3 adoption, scams steal hundreds of millions from users each month, and billions per year. But putting a stop to scams is now possible thanks to threat intelligence offerings like Forta’s Scam Detector. The full in-depth report on October’s Scam landscape is available on the Forta blog.

Scam Vendors pose a unique threat to Web3. Scam vendors like the Inferno Drainer have stolen tens of millions from users with no sign of slowing down. They provide out-of-the-box solutions (malicious code) to would-be scammers in exchange for a cut of the victim's stolen assets. Fortunately, Forta’s Scam Detector flags these contracts at deployment as described in this thread. To better detect these scams, Forta recently launched a bounty aimed at discovering associated ENS registrations, among others.

What’s the deal with rake tokens? You might have heard the term “rake token” floating around in Web3 security circles, but what exactly does it mean? Rake tokens are defined as a token that is aiming to exploit market conditions for its malicious creator by crafting tokens with high fees on transfers and trades, these actors set a snare for the unwary. Thus the owner of the contract receives a ‘rake’ of all transfers, earning undeserved revenue from unsuspecting users in perpetuity. Learn more about the scam in Forta’s explainer.

Forta Around the Web

- Newsweek features Forta in pig butchering article
- ZettaBlock’s live session interviews Forta’s Carlos Salort
- Address poisoning as a weapon?