According to a Sept. 8 tweet from Brave, the privacy-based browser has incorporated open source solutions from cybersecurity firm PhishFort. The aim is to help prevent phishing attacks — a scam that usually involves tricking a victim into giving up personal information with a fake email that leads to a fake website. Brave stated that the firm’s software would detect crypto scams and warn users about suspicious domains. Details about the integration are scant at present, however a PhishFort report from June said that: “when the reward is as valuable and anonymous as cryptocurrency assets and secrets, these attackers quickly …

Fraudulent websites successfully have stolen the personal records of a number of individuals from the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Spain and more. The attack was executed as a targeted multistage Bitcoin (BTC) scam propagated by a number of fraudulent websites. According to the Singapore-based intelligence company Group-IB, the attack exposed personal data for thousands of people. Impersonating recognized media outlets and personalities Victim's phone numbers, which in most cases came with names and emails, were contained in personalized URLs used to redirect people to websites. These sites posed as local news outlets, even going …

Cryptocurrencies forensics experts from Xrplorer warned on June 15 of an elaborate phishing scam where hackers try to steal the secret keys of XRP users, under the false premise that Ripple is giving away tokens. According to the report, the scam campaign, whose origin dates back to approximately January 17, 2020, began sending memo messages with minimal XRP amounts that said: “Starting February 1, 2020, Ripple is releasing 3 Billion XRP to incentivize network users. Get 25% more XRP added to your account balance in just minutes.” The scammers linked to a website inside the memo impersonating the Ripple’s Insight …

The crypto community has rallied in support of the victim of a phishing scheme who lost 12 Bitcoins (BTC) — the entirety of the investor’s holdings that had been accumulated over seven years. On June 12, Eric Savics, the host of Protocol Podcast, tweeted that he has lost his entire Bitcoin savings after entering aftering the seed phrase for his hardware wallet into a malicious imposter of KeepKey’s app from the Google Chrome store. Savics stated that he had hoped to purchase an apartment in future using the funds, stating: “All of my savings are gone, I have zero Bitcoin.” …

Per a new report released by digital-asset intelligence firm CipherTrace on June 2, the value of ill-gotten funds siphoned through cryptocurrency crimes over the first five months of the year stands at a whopping $1.4 billion, thus making 2020 a potentially active year in regard to cryptocurrency-related thefts, hacks and fraud. The report goes on to state that if things continue at the same rate, the total volume of stolen crypto for 2020 has the potential to get close to reaching the $4.5-billion mark set in 2019. Criminals appear to be capitalizing on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to target unsuspecting …

While Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, is facing a lawsuit for promoting cryptocurrency scams, Google’s advertising platform continues to display fraudulent crypto ads through its advertising network. According to a report by Bitcoin (BTC) crypto exchange, CoinCorner, Google Ads was running an ad for CoinCorner’s phishing clone website, CoinCornerr.com. The issue was reported by CoinCorner’s marketing manager, Molly Spiers, on April 30. Google Ads promotes a crypto scam but doesn’t want to promote a real firm Spiers told Cointelegraph that CoinCorner’s team first noticed the fraudulent ad on Thursday morning after searching for “CoinCorner” on Google.com and Google.co.uk. According to the executive, …

Litecoin (LTC) and other alts are becoming increasingly prevalent among crypto “sextortionists” since they allow to avoid detection more easily, a new research says. According to cybersecurity firm Cofense’s new report published on Oct. 8, malicious actors are gradually starting to shift their focus from Bitcoin (BTC) to specifically avoid detection by specialized email filters. The report states: “As enterprises began writing detection rules to block those emails, threat actors modified the text by replacing it with an image, which prevented key words from being identified by Secure Email Gateways (SEGs). The bitcoin address was left as a plain text …

Binance claims to have assisted British prosecutors in an investigation of an online fraud that resulted in over $51 million losses by victims. Criminal is now jailed On Sept. 26, Binance’s chief compliance officer Samuel Lim published a blog post saying that the exchange was working with the Cyber Crime Unit of the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service to investigate into Bulgarian phishing expert Svetoslav Donchev. As officially reported by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Donchev, 37, was extradited to the U.K. from Bulgaria to face the online scamming fraud charges and pleaded guilty to five offences to receive a …

Four out of the first five results presented when querying Google for a “bitcoin qr generator” lead to scam websites. The findings Cryptocurrency wallet ZenGo wrote the findings in a blog post published on Aug. 29. Reportedly, when researching prior to implementing QR Code support in their wallet, ZenGo learned of the prevalence of scam QR Code generators. The company explains how the alleged scam works: “These sites generate a QR code that encodes an address controlled by the scammers, instead of the one requested by the user, thus directing all payments for this QR code to the scammers.” QR …

The security team at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has revealed how it countered a sophisticated phishing attack aiming to exfiltrate private keys and passwords. In a blog post published on Aug. 8, the exchange outlined its discovery and reporting of the incident, which involved the exploitation of two 0-day vulnerabilities on Mozilla’s web browser Firefox. A “highly-targeted and thought-out” attack The first steps of the phishing scam, Coinbase reveals, date back to late May of this year, when over a dozen exchange employees received an email from an innocuous-seeming University of Cambridge “Research Grants Administrator.” Coming from a legitimate Cambridge academic …

Eliyahu Gigi, a 31-year-old from Tel Aviv, has been charged with stealing over $1.7 billion in a variety of cryptocurrencies. Gigi allegedly stole Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Dash (DASH) from users in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Lawyer Yeela Harel of the cyber department in the State Attorney's Office filed charges against Gigi on July 17, according to a report published the same day by Israeli business outlet Globes. Gigi has reportedly been charged with crimes including theft, fraud, and money laundering, among others. According to the report, Harel’s indictment claims that Gigi set up a network of scam …

Two Israeli brothers have been arrested in connection with the hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and other crypto-related phishing attacks, finance news outlet Finance Magnates reports on June 23. An Israeli police spokesperson reportedly told Finance Magnates that Eli Gigi and his younger brother Assaf Gigi netted tens of millions of dollars. The two are suspected of being responsible for long-term systematic theft of cryptocurrencies by maliciously obtaining access to other users’ accounts. The two allegedly created credential-stealing clones of major online cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets and sent links to those phishing sites on Telegram groups and other cryptocurrency-related communities. …