Experts from the Kaspersky lab security have exposed a 10 million dollar worth Ethereum heist through social engineering in the past one year. The 10 million heist meant that 21,000 ethereum coins had been stolen going by the current market valuation. Cyber-crime has been on the rise recently with scammers triggering hundreds of thousands of security alarms since the beginning of this year which caused panic all through the crypto space with wallet manufacturers and crypto exchanges fearing the worst. Kaspersky Lab experts have noted a pattern whereby cybercriminals target investors who are interested in participating in Initial coin offerings (ICOS). They take advantage of unsuspecting investors through fake websites and phishing scams that rob potential investors of their money by pretending to be associated with the said Initial coin offering (ICO).
The Kaspersky lab experts in their report mention the Switcheo ICO as one instant where fraudsters made away with 25,000 dollars’ worth of crypto by posting a fake offer on Twitter claiming to be associated with the ICO. Another notable mention was the “crypto-currency giveaway” con game where unsuspecting investors were promised high payouts if they handed over small amounts of crypto at that moment. These fraudsters followed up the evil scam by creating fake social media accounts of billionaire tech personalities such as Pavel Durov of Telegram and business magnate Elon Musk. They created these fake accounts and used them to sell their scam offer to unsuspecting investors who later fell for the con game and ended up losing money.
Lead web content analyst at Kaspersky Nadezhda Demidova stated that crypto scam techniques were evolving as the technologies evolved, making it difficult to protect people against them. He also worryingly stated that crypto phishing was more attractive to scammers since it was more lucrative than other kinds of phishing attacks previously orchestrated by the same criminals. Even more worrying is Demidova’s statement that explained the success of crypto heists as the ability of criminals to exploit the human investor factor.
Kaspersky has recently raised the alarm on changing cyber-crime patterns that have seen a shift from Ransomware attacks to “crypto jacking”, which involves the infection of a crypto mining computer with malware without the owner’s permission. Kaspersky, which is traditionally known for offering protection against malware such as Ransomware, Trojans, and viruses, has also developed a wandering eye and delved into crypto crime observation. This is explained by the pervasive rise in crypto hackings and crypto scams. Leading industry platforms such as Bithump, Coin rail and Coin check have all suffered crypto heists and it would be great if firms like Kaspersky came to the rescue.
