I recently experienced a costly and unsettling incident involving clipboard malware that secretly replaced my cryptocurrency wallet address. While transferring around $2,000 worth of Ethereum from my personal wallet to a reputable exchange for trading, I carefully copied the exchange’s Ethereum address directly from their website.

After pasting the address into my wallet’s transfer field, I confidently hit “send,” believing everything was correct. After an hour, I checked my exchange account and saw no incoming funds. Feeling uneasy, I quickly revisited my transaction history. Shockingly, the recipient address differed entirely from the one I’d copied. My Ethereum had vanished to an unknown address.

Horrified, I learned through research that clipboard hijacking malware had secretly swapped the legitimate address with a fraudulent one under the control of scammers. This type of malware silently targets users transferring cryptocurrency, exploiting the irreversible nature of blockchain transactions.

I immediately secured my computer, removed malware, and reported the fraudulent address online to warn others. Sadly, the stolen Ethereum was irrecoverable. This devastating incident taught me to always double-check cryptocurrency addresses multiple times, use secure wallets with additional verification steps, and ensure robust anti-malware software protection.