Inferno Drainer Winds Down ‘Operations’ After Stealing $71 Million

Inferno Drainer, one of the most widely used wallet-draining services in recent memory, has announced that it will be ceasing operations effective immediately.

Over $70 Million Stolen While Active

Earlier this spring, the first mentions of the Inferno drainer – a service that “helped” bad actors steal funds out of other wallets in exchange for a 20% cut – started to pop up on the Scam Sniffer telegram.

At the time, Scam Sniffer reported that nearly 5,000 people had been targeted by the drainer, resulting in the loss of nearly $6 million. The service’s modus operandi was, usually, to clone the websites of projects pointed out by someone who made contact on Telegram. Once the targets fell for it, Inferno’s phishing software would drain the wallet and pay out 80% to the collaborator.

1/ Inferno Drainer, a scam vendor specializing in multi-chain scams, has stolen $5.9 million in assets from nearly 4,888 victims through over 689 phishing websites targeting popular projects.https://t.co/OEjdzHm2Ls

— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) May 19, 2023

However, this was only the beginning. Currently, blockchain explorers attribute over $71 million worth of stolen funds to the services of Inferno drainer. The admin of the drainer, on the other hand, claims the total amount stolen is actually more than $80 million.

If the malware providers’ figures are correct, the team behind the wallet drainer has gathered about $16 million worth of illicit profit in about half a year.

Goodbye Post Mimics Those of Punked Projects

Deciding to call it a day before flying too close to the sun that burns like (sic) an inferno, the hackers announced the permanent closure of their service on Telegram.

The post’s tone is true to form for hackers, displaying the same gallows humor and sardonic mannerisms often seen in communications with such individuals.

“The end of the craziest journey. Inferno drainer is shutting down. It has been a long ride with all of you and we’d like to thank you from heart. Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. After +80 millions of $ drained, we decided to shut down, it’s time for us to move on. […] A big thank to everyone who has worked with us such as Drakan and every other customers, we hope you can remember us as the best drainer that has ever existed and that we succeeded in helping you in the quest of making money.”

The post also stated that the service would be closed for good, and anyone pretending to contact users of the service on their behalf would simply be someone attempting to scam them. Go figure.

Although Inferno may be gone, competing services remain active and serve as a reminder to practice basic opsec whenever interacting with others.