Nicolas Christin

Prof. at Carnegie Mellon Univ. Computer security, online crime, and misc seediness. Reformed(?) hacker, econ. migrant. AKA @[email protected], @nc2y.bsky.social

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

New research alert 🚨 from my group, “Blockchain Address Poisoning” (Tsuchiya et al.), to appear at @USENIXSecurity 2025 (https://t.co/LQsjwgvLS1)! As a follow-up, we also developed a real-time detection system: https://t.co/o1Fl00QSq9 and @toxin_tagger (1/7)

[lynnette ng @quarbby]

So I made it to the Pittsburgh local news 😀

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

@__apf__ We, French people... can do that? I wish I had known!

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

The system is back up and, guess what, successful attacks continue apace…

[Toxin Tagger (T-T) @toxin_tagger]

Our detection system is down due to our Ethereum/BSC nodes experiencing many issues. We have been syncing the nodes from scratch. Thank you for your patience.

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

Anyway, I digress. Read Jenny's paper. It's illuminating. Older people are far from being digitally illiterate, and we are not serving their needs well at the moment. And we have to fix this, sooner rather than later. (5/5)

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

My student Jenny Tang just presented our work at #chi26. We have been interested in post-mortem management of online accounts (1/5)
https://t.co/tjsYr6E1RM

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

A lot of us have completely moved all asset management online. I haven't been to my bank since 2005. Yet, a lot of estate planning does not account for, or even reflect that new reality. (4/5)

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

Following up on my earlier post, we're starting something quite exciting at CMU @CyLab
https://t.co/jsD061RzwF

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

@azaztrader01 @etherscan It's an excellent piece from a journalistic standpoint (even setting aside the shout-out):
1) they cited the work properly, it's really rare to have journalists actually link to the original article.
2) the piece is technically sound and well researched. Again, rare!

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

Looks like our address poisoning work is quite prominently featured in this @etherscan blog post. Nice write up btw.

[etherscan.eth @etherscan]

https://t.co/SBZoEtLqM0

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

My colleagues at @CarnegieMellon @CyLab and I wrote a position paper/manifesto about our view of the future for cyber autonomy (in short: how AI is impacting computer security).
https://t.co/gt32dWEt35

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

I very rarely come 'round these parts anymore, but, I just wanted to congratulate freshly-minted Dr. @quarbby on an amazing dissertation/defense and on a wonderfully inspiring life story. Fantastic work, Lynnette!

[Toxin Tagger (T-T) @toxin_tagger]

🚨ALERT🚨 #ETHEREUM, 2026-01-04 21:50 (UTC)
$18,500.00 was sent to the lookalike address (0x4cb1...)
Details on https://t.co/9fvH4qiH3L

[Carnegie Mellon ECE @CMU_ECE]

Lujo Bauer has been named a 2025 ACM Fellow for contributions to access control, usable security and privacy, and the security of machine learning. Congratulations! @TheOfficialACM

https://t.co/6MUSX8zsXu

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

When it pours it rains

[Toxin Tagger (T-T) @toxin_tagger]

🚨ALERT🚨 #ETHEREUM, 2025-12-20 00:13 (UTC)
$102,671.00 was sent to the lookalike address (0x9344...)
Details on https://t.co/xxMDRECatW

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

Somebody is going to have a very merry Christmas. Somebody else is going to have a very bad Christmas (HT: @toxin_tagger).

50M bucks. Geez.

[Toxin Tagger (T-T) @toxin_tagger]

🚨ALERT🚨 #ETHEREUM, 2025-12-19 15:32 (UTC)
$49,999,950.00 was sent to the lookalike address (0xbaff...)
Details on https://t.co/mATl0wbQdK

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

@CodeWizard58045 @SoskaKyle Yes. Same website, BSC tab. It's a bit outdated right now, we're updating our chain.

[Kyle Soska @SoskaKyle]

1.1 million USDT phished on Ethereum yesterday!

The attackers look for small transfers from whales and use GPU farms to brute force look-a-like addresses to fool the whale into sending funds to the attacker.

Please be careful and always double-check addresses!

[Nicolas Christin @nc2y]

Wee!

[Toxin Tagger (T-T) @toxin_tagger]

🚨ALERT🚨 ETHEREUM, 2025-12-02 16:26:23 (UTC)
The attacker's lookalike address 0xec6d9...9b2e1d74 appeared to receive $1,099,516.02.
Details on https://t.co/BZNfQYtRtE