The originator of the Dingo Token — a cryptocurrency with a purported market capitalization of $11 million — has included a backdoor in the code to charge each transaction a fee of up to 99% of the worth of the token.
That’s according to cybersecurity firm Check Point Software, which has issued an advisory warning potential investors of what the company calls “a scam.”
While the documents describing the Dingo Token claimed that the scheme charged 10% per transaction, Check Point researchers found 47 transactions where the total fee per transaction had been increased to 99%. The creator had also set the fee to 99% for future transactions, essentially stealing the funds of any traders of the cryptocurrency, according to the analysis published this week.
The Dingo Token creator has already transferred previously collected funds to other accounts, leaving no money for anyone holding Dingo tokens, says Oded Vanunu, head of products vulnerabilities research at Check Point Software.
“The function was called many times by the owners to prevent users from selling their holdings,” he says.
While those efforts may have started as legitimate businesses, the Dingo Token scheme likely started as fraud from the start, Check Point stated in its analysis.
“We examined the Dingo smart contract and quickly found it seemed like a scam,” the company stated. “The project website contains no real information about the owners of the projects.”
