Kaspersky Labs Says $10 M in ETH Stolen This Year Via Social Engineering Scams

While governments round the world wrangle over the position of cryptocurrencies and laws to manage them, scammers area unit busy exploiting the digital gold rush. a replacement report from world cyber-security firm, Kaspersky Labs says that a comparatively new dishonest trend, cryptocurrency social engineering schemes, helped criminals web nearly $10m this year.

Kaspersky says the increasing quality of cryptocurrencies is attracting record numbers of sammers and within the half of 2018, its product blocked over 100 thousand triggers concerning cryptocurrencies on faux exchanges and alternative sources.

Besides hacking exchanges, exploiting smart-contract vulnerabilities, and deploying malicious miners, cybercriminals also are resorting to a lot of ancient social-engineering strategies which will reap ample bucks. Their targets don’t seem to be simply the homeowners of cryptocurrency wallets, however essentially associate degreeyone with an interest within the subject.

Some of the foremost well-liked targets for criminals area unit ICO investors, cyber-criminals produce faux sites that simulate the sites of official ICO comes, or try to gain access to their contacts in order that they will send a phishing email with the amount of an e-wallet for investors to send their cryptocurrency to.

Another sought-after trend involves cryptocurrency giveaway scams. Victims send atiny low quantity of cryptocurrency, in exchange for a far larger payout of identical currency within the future. Criminals use social media accounts of well-known people, love Elon Musk, by making faux accounts or replying to tweets from legitimate users through faux accounts, criminals area unit able to confuse Twitter users into falling for the scam.

Nadezhda Demidova, Lead website analyst, Kaspersky work says:

“These new fraud schemes are based on simple social engineering methods, but stand out from common phishing attacks because they help criminals make millions of dollars. The success criminals have enjoyed suggests that they know how to exploit the human factor, which has always been one of the weakest links in cybersecurity, to capitalize on user behaviors.