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Clipboard malware
Clipboard malware is malicious software that watches what you copy and, when it sees a crypto address, silently swaps in an address the attacker controls. You paste what looks like the right address and send your funds to the thief.
What it means for you. A crypto payment cannot be reversed, so the check has to happen before you send: compare the pasted address with the original in full, every character, not just the first and last few. On a hardware wallet, compare the address on the device screen with the address the recipient gave you through a separate channel.
Sources: bitcoin.org: Avoid scams (malware), Ivanov and Yan, EthClipper: A Clipboard Meddling Attack on Hardware Wallets (arXiv) · checked 4 October 2026
Address poisoning
Address poisoning is a scam where an attacker creates a wallet address that starts and ends with the same characters as one you use, then sends a tiny or zero-value transfer from it so it appears in your history. The hope is that you later copy the fake address instead of the real one.
What it means for you. Wallets often shorten addresses to the first and last few characters, which is exactly what the fake one matches. Compare the whole address, not just the ends, and copy it from a saved contact or the real recipient rather than from your transaction history. A payment to the wrong address cannot be pulled back.
Source: ERC-8117 (draft): Anti-Poisoning Compact EVM Address Format, Motivation · checked 4 October 2026