When it comes to cryptocurrency-related assaults, bad actors appear to be shifting their attention away from classic financial risks like banking PC and mobile malware and toward phishing.Â
According to Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus vendor Kaspersky, bitcoin phishing assaults will climb by 40% year on year in 2022. In 2018, the business identified 5,040,520 crypto phishing assaults, compared to 3,596,437 in 2021. A classic phishing assault involves contacting investors using phony websites and communication methods that look just like legitimate companies. Users are then requested to give personal information such as private keys, granting attackers unauthorized access to crypto wallets and valuables.
While Kaspersky could not determine if the trend would continue in 2023, phishing assaults maintained their pace. In March, Trezor, a hardware cryptocurrency wallet manufacturer, issued a warning about attempts to steal customers’ bitcoin by luring them into entering their recovery phrase on a phony Trezor site.
In a 2022 study performed by Kaspersky, one out of every seven respondents acknowledged to having been a victim of bitcoin phishing. While most phishing attempts include giveaway scams or phony wallet phishing pages, attackers’ tactics are always evolving. According to Kaspersky, “crypto still remains a symbol of getting rich quickly with minimal effort,” which encourages scammers to develop new ways and stories to entice naïve crypto investors.
Arbitrum investors were recently made aware of a phishing link via the company’s official Discord channel. A hacker allegedly gained access to one of Arbitrum’s developers’ Discord accounts, which was then used to send a phony announcement with a phishing link.
When Cointelegraph visited the phishing URL, it discovered that it leads to a blank page with the word “Astaghfirullah,” which translates to “I seek forgiveness in God.” The phrase can also be used to indicate incredulity or disgust, according to Wiktionary.
