The bear market for the crypto space at large lasted for nearly three years and finally, it is trying to break out of it. While this is certainly good news, it has also brought the return of crypto scams and attacks in the market. Most of the scams that happen follow a very basic modus operandi, which proves to be quite effective. It all begins with things like YouTube, Twitter, or even Google searches, all the while trapping unsuspecting users by creating fake advertisements. These ads offer giveaways that are simply too-good-to-be-true. In some cases, these scammers actually create a completely fake website that’s dedicated to behaving like a legitimate one.
If you pay attention, you will notice that these fake domains have sneaky misspellings or only have some minor details changed. Following a similar attack vector, a fake Ledger site ended up stealing millions in XRP from unsuspecting users. The attackers were sophisticated enough to create a fake domain name and they used it to swindle a total of 1.15 million XRP from the hands of numerous victims. As of now, this total amount of stolen XRP has a valuation of $280,000. It was highlighted by XRP Forensics that the attackers sent the funds to an account on crypto exchange Bittrex.
The exchange was informed a bit late due to which it wasn’t able to flag these addresses and seize the cryptocurrency, which provided attackers the perfect opportunity to get away with the stolen gains. Not surprisingly, Bittrex chose to stay quiet about the matter. CEX.IO is an international crypto exchange and its CTO, Dmytro Volkov also commented on the hacking attacks that have been made against crypto wallets. He explained that these attacks are typically aimed at the most vulnerable aspects of the whole system; the users and their respective devices.
According to Volkov, hacking devices of end-users is quite easy, not to mention how simple it is to compromise human beings with a little bit of social engineering. He explained that it is typically rare for hackers to directly crack a wallet due to the very high levels of security protocols, including the complex cryptography that’s involved in wallets generally. If they are done correctly, hacks that are carried out through social engineering can turn out to be extremely effective. This became quite obvious back in July when a 17 year old hailing from Florida was able to initiate a brutal crypto scam.
He ended up hacking around 25 high-profile accounts, both political and celebrity. The purpose of social engineering is to target human nature and there is no reliable method of preventing it. However, it should be noted that there are certain clues that you can find amongst the social engineering scams and in order to stay safe, an internet user needs to be familiar with it. In such sensitive matters, wisdom, along with experience from already having dealt with such scams, can keep you safe, or else you will also end up becoming a victim.