The notorious Mt. Gox exchange is notorious for containing around 79,956 BTC in its legendary Bitcoin wallet. In recent months, it has succumbed to a very clever phishing attack. The wallet currently stores Bitcoin valued at around $8.7 billion. Unfortunately, it has become the target of a phishing campaign trying to decrypt its contents. This attack comes just as rehabilitation efforts to restore Mt. The aim of the deposits is to repay the creditors who lost money when the exchange crashed.

The phishing attempt in question specifically targets the historic Bitcoin address we used—1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF. Now, a new transaction is sent to the Mt. It included an unusual message instructing the owner to visit a shady website that pretends to have connections to Salomon Brothers, a since-closed Wall Street investment bank. This tactic times the wallet’s owner. It tricks them into exposing sensitive information that would allow someone else to gain unauthorized access to their money.

Mt. Gox’s rehabilitation plan, approved in 2021, aims to reimburse creditors with about 90% of their missing money. There’s a related conspiracy theory circulating that law enforcement recovered 140,000 BTC from Mt. Gox. Even with this recovery, most of Mt. Gox’s Bitcoin is still in the same dormant wallets, idling for more than 10 years.

Unfortunately, the issue of these dormant addresses still looms, and it, too, draws malicious actors looking to take advantage of any vulnerabilities they can find. This latest phishing attempt spotlights an emerging and very real cybersecurity threat to dormant cryptocurrency wallets. This risk especially poses a threat to large institutions, like Mt. Gox. Security professionals advise you to be cautious whenever you are interacting with unknown emails or web content. You should be skeptical if they start talking about long-gone banks.