Terra money website frozen to prevent more phishing scams

Layer-1 blockchain Terra has temporarily shut down its website in order to protect users from ongoing phishing scams on the platform.

“The terra(dot) money domains have successfully been frozen to prevent further user phishing scams, but a full resolution is still underway,” Terra officially announced on X (formerly Twitter) on Aug. 22.

Terra advised all users to avoid engaging with any sites under the aforementioned domain until the foundation posts an official “all-clear” notice from this account.

“Our team has been working around the clock to rectify this issue, but we’ve encountered delays with some third-party responses,” Terra added.

In the announcement, Terra also mentioned some latest details and updates regarding its multichain wallet Station Wallet, which allows users to access decentralized applications on diverse platforms blockchain networks, including Terra, Juno and Kujira.

On Aug. 21, Station Wallet posted significant updates about the wallet to increase safety and security of its users. Station Wallet urged users to stay away from using Station desktop and mobile apps until the wallet confirms their safety. “An announcement will be posted as soon as they have been updated,” the announcement noted.

Station Wallet also provided several links to the updated browser extensions and apps allowing users to interact with the wallet.

The freeze comes shortly after Terra website was compromised over the weekend by hackers who attempted to scam users via phishing attacks. Terra initially posted a warning for users on Aug. 19, urging users to not interact with any sites with the Terra money domain until further updates are published. Terra then soon published a similar warning the next day, on Aug. 20.

To all Terra users,

Please do not interact with any sites with the terra(dot)money domain until we put out another update.

Although sites are coming back online, the team is still working to secure full access to the domain.

During this time, please only refer to our…

— Terra Powered by LUNA (@terra_money) August 19, 2023

The latest issues hitting Terra come more than a year after the previous version of the Terra digital ecosystem collapsed in May 2022. The event wiped out $40 billion from the crypto ecosystem and triggered a massive contagion in the industry as Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin UST collapsed.

Despite all the failures, a part of Terra community led by Terra co-founder Do Kwon decided to stay and work on reviving the project. The enthusiasts subsequently launched Terra 2.0 with the promise of helping retrieving the lost funds.

According to data from CoinGecko, Terra’s (LUNA) market capitalization amounts to $152.7 million at the time of writing. The token has significantly tumbled amid the news of Terra money’s latest hack, losing 22% over the past seven days. The token is also down more than 70% over the past year.

*Terra (LUNA) seven-day price chart. Source: CoinGecko*

Some online industry observers have expressed little to no sympathy to those affected by the latest issues on Terra due to its long history of issues.

“If you have a terra.money domain it deserves to be hacked,” one Redditor wrote in a thread discussing Terra money’s latest hack. “If you’re still in the Terra ecosystem, I have little sympathy for you,” another user on Reddit stated.

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