Skip to main content

Ethereum Most Popular Crypto Among Phishers who made $2.3 Million in Q2 2018: Kaspersky

ethereum

Cybercriminals have raked in a total $2.3 million by exploiting ICOs via phishing in the second quarter of 2018, a Kaspersky study revealed.
The multinational cybersecurity company in its new Spam and Phishing in Q2 2018 report found that online malefactors target crypto investors with fake ICO websites. Most of these sites belong to Ethereum-powered startups that raise money for the development of their platforms.
In addition to injecting a phony crowdfunding link into their outbound emails, cybercriminals try every last trick to influence a victim to send them crypto-funds to their Ethereum wallets willingly. The victims, believing they are investing in a good ICO round, ends up throwing their Ether funds to unlawful benefactors.
“Cybercriminals continue using the names of new ICO projects to collect money from potential investors that are trying to gain early access to new tokens,” Kaspersky disclosed. “Sometimes phishing sites pop up before official project sites.”
For example, the situation around the very fresh phishing attack on Experty can be mentioned for further elaboration. The ICO participants of this ‘Skype-like voice and video call application’ had lost $150,000 worth of Ethereum to a fraudulent pre-ICO scheme impersonating Experty. To participate in the ICO, investors had to go through a regular registration procedure on Experty’s website. Scammers managed to steal the information of potential investors from the company. They later persuaded these investors to send them Ether funds via a fake invitation link. As a result, investors lost a hefty sum.
A tremendously popular ICO announced by Telegram had also invoked hackers to employ various unlawful strategies, resulting in a dozen fake sites. By the time Telegram presale concluded, its impersonations had already raked in money that was reportedly comparable to the original presale round.
So far, Kaspersky has managed to monitor phishing attempts that are considered traditional by their approach. The antivirus company claims that they have “prevented 58,000 user attempts to connect to phishing websites masquerading as popular cryptocurrency wallets and markets” with their antiphishing system. In 2017, the number of recorded phishing attacks were two thousand, as confirmed by Alexander Gostev, Kaspersky’s chief antivirus expert
In the same year, ICO market had lost over $300 million to cybercriminals, including hackers and phishers.

HTTPS Certification is Not Reliable

Even the most informed investors consider websites with HTTPS certification genuine. The Kaspersky report, however, finds that malicious pages can now be found on secure pages, blaming it on the ease of access of these certificates. The study added that popular browsers like Google are beginning to change their approach towards certifying non-encrypted websites. It read:
“Starting in September 2018, the browser (Chrome 69) will stop marking HTTPS sites as “Secure” in the URL bar. Instead, starting in October 2018, Chrome will start displaying the “Not secure” label when users enter data on unencrypted sites.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
Source: https://www.ccn.com/ethereum-most-popular-crypto-among-phishers-who-made-2-3-million-in-q2-2018-kaspersky/
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

There Is No ‘Bitcoin’: What the SEC Doesn’t Get About Cryptocurrency

Edan Yago is the founder of  CementDAO , an effort to bring together stablecoins into a unified ecosystem.  He previously was the CEO and co-founder of software firm Epiphyte and helped set up the industry associations DATA and the Stablecoin Foundation.  The views expressed here are his own. —————————- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been gone to significant lengths in an attempt to understand the crypto asset space. This effort is to be applauded. However, the SEC has failed to come to terms with one fundamental aspect of crypto assets and systems. Namely, properly constructed crypto systems do not involve “persons” or “entities” and do not represent a form of property. For this reason, they do not have any analogue in the traditional financial world, nor can they fall under financial regulation. In the traditional financial world, assets are a claim on a specific property. For example, a commodity, shares in a company or a debt o...
5 comments
Read more

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the temporary suspension of trading in the securities Bitcoin Tracker One (“CXBTF”) and Ether Tracker One

The regulator pointed to “a lack of current, consistent and accurate information” in the two crypto investment vehicles issued by Swedish firm XBT Provider AB following their entry into the US market last month. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Sunday issued an order to halt the trading in Bitcoin Tracker One (CXBTF) and Ether Tracker One (CETHF), two investment products that track cryptocurrencies. The two exchange-traded notes (ETNs) are issued by Swedish company XBT Provider AB, a subsidiary of U.K.-based Coinshares Holdings. The two products have been listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange since 2015 and  entered the U.S. market  last month under the ticker CXBTF, enabling domestic investors to access and invest in the crypto ETNs in an over-the-counter (OTC) market with their U.S. dollars. SEC_News ✔ @SEC_News The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the temporary suspension of trading in the securities Bitc...
5 comments
Read more

Major Accountancy Firms Race to Offer Auditing Services for Crypto and Blockchain Companies

Top professional services firms, including EY, PwC, and KPMG, are currently hiring hundreds of blockchain and cryptocurrency experts to offer auditing services to companies involved in the loosely regulated sector, the Financial Times reported on Oct. 29. Auditors Grapple with Crypto and Blockchain Despite a prevailing lack of consensus on how digital assets should be accounted for and the overall negative sentiment large financial institutions have towards cryptocurrencies in general, major accountancy firms don’t shy away from providing services to companies in the sector. Companies such as EY, PwC, and KPMG are ramping up their by hiring specialized staff and developing their own in-house technologies to support the crypto audit process. The main reasoning behind the overwhelming support the industry has gotten from the auditors stems from their belief that businesses will continue to use the blockchain technology underpinning it even as the hype around cryptocurrencies die...
5 comments
Read more