Dave Maynor and Jeremiah O'Connor, Cisco researchers, have revealed a phishing scheme that helped scammers make "tens of millions of dollars" in cryptocurrency.
Cisco experts, together with the Ukrainian cyber police, have been monitoring the Coinhoarder scheme for six months. It was found that over three years, scammers were able to steal about $50 million in digital currency. Moreover, $2 million of it was stolen in less than four weeks last year.
The essence of the scheme is extremely simple: attackers distributed fake copies of the Blockchain.info website across the network and assigned them fake names like block-clain.info or blockchien.info. They then advertised through Google AdWords and invited users to use the fake services. The effectiveness of the scheme shows how much income such cyber attacks bring to scammers.
According to representatives of Cisco and the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine, agency experts continue to monitor the activities of several more similar fraudulent groups.
Representatives of the cyber police of Ukraine believe that most of the projects that are created in the country are most likely fake and have one main goal - obtaining 100% profit without providing guarantees to investors.
The department also recommends treating such projects with caution, since, according to security officials, there may be three options for the development of events: the disappearance of project organizers along with investors’ capital, reports of hacker attacks and break-ins, lack of potential growth of digital currencies.
As it became known earlier, Sergei Demedyuk, who holds the post of head of the Cyber Police Department of Ukraine, spoke in support of state regulation of digital currencies as means of payment in the territory country.
Earlier it became known that a promising and “promising” crypto startup LoopX disappeared from sight in all networks, along with $4.5 million invested in it.
Editor’s note: by itself Phishing technology is not new, and is used not only in relation to cryptocurrencies.
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