The excitement surrounding cryptocurrency appears to have piqued the interest of cybercriminals. In the last five months, cybersecurity professionals have detected a stunning 2,00,000 phishing assaults aimed at stealing digital money from unwary users.
Hackers utilize similar-looking websites or interfaces to entice users to log in with their credentials in phishing attacks. The hackers get control of the victims’ accounts after stealing their credentials. Since the start of 2022, Kaspersky’s cyber security professionals have discovered approximately 2,00,000 attempts to remove users’ digital money and credentials. The hackers appear to be after 20 of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets. In the first quarter, 50% of the 2,00,000 incidents were documented.
Seventy-five percent of the malicious malware identified exploited the Binance exchange. Electrum (10%) and MetaMask (10%) came in second and third, respectively (9 percent).
The fact that phishing attempts surpassed 50,000 in April demonstrates the scope of the problem. Scammers and bad actors are mostly targeting cryptocurrency wallets. With the rise of digital currencies over the last five years, Kaspersky researchers have witnessed a variety of cybercriminal strategies used to steal bitcoin, from tempting victims with presents supplied by cryptocurrency trading to circulating Trojanized DeFi wallets, according to a Kaspersky executive.
Scammers target crypto wallets because they are the first place to store bitcoin and deal with big quantities of virtual money, according to him.
Fraudsters imitate the websites of legitimate crypto wallets, luring victims into entering a personal seed.
Phishing crypto scams, according to Alexey Marchenko, Kaspersky’s Head of Content Filtering Methods Research, require no extensive technological expertise to initiate and function efficiently for the scammers because they are based on social engineering.
People must be extremely attentive, according to Marchenko, to defend themselves from such attacks. “Unexpected messages about money or account losses, transfers, gifts, or prizes are virtually always a ruse. You should always double-check links, as reported by BusinessLine.
