Bitcoin Forum

A recent report developed by cryptocurrency intelligence firm Ciphertrace estimated losses from theft and scams in the first quarter at $356 million with additional fraud losses of $851 million totaling $1.2 billion in total loss. Alongside the report came a study recognizing how the attacks were coming seeing an increase in malware and ransomware attacks.

A few other noticeable ways funds are being taken are through clipboard hijacking, website clones and social engineering. While it makes me positive to know we've figured out ways scammers can creep in - do you think the tech will be strong enough to avoid these?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/grand-theft-crypto-state-cryptocurrency-053700942.html

feels like im a lucky person some time with all the thefts going on it never happend to me so far and i have alot of exchange acounts and wallets, but never happend so far know on wood, guess its going to happend to me to sooner or later,

I've seen a lot of the website clones even social media accounts but the others I wasn't too familiar with. Nothing better than a trustless system. Always be skeptical

In the future yes because bitcoin is still developing and people are still learning to avoid scams and frauds. This is part of the developments where losses could be determine at early stage. However, the team to which crypto investment regard has already establishing ways to avoid this and spreading awareness especially here in the forum. Just always take time to read threads and posts that is related to crypto scams and frauds.

Relative to the growth of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will be the increase in the existence of scammers amd hackers. Scammers always look for the ways to cheat the users and take control of the funds, while hackers look for the loop holes to breach breaking securities provided to safe gaurd the funds. Both can be overcome by the user with the responsibility the user takes in keeping thyself away from scammers and hackers.

this has nothing to do with technology it is targeting people. although there are exceptions about altcoins which in many cases they had exploits in their technology that help steal people's money but we are talking about bitcoin here so i ignore those.
the  way these thefts work is that they always target "people" and use their mistakes to rob them. for example all these malwares depend on the user installing them on their computer and letting it rob them.

The same tactics are used by hackers to get hold of people's login credentials and money in Banks via online Banking services. So, this is not unique to Bitcoin in any way, it was just ported to Bitcoin because people also use third party services to access their coins.

Satoshi never wanted people to access their coins via third party services, because he knew those services would be vulnerable. So, if people could run their own nodes and access their coins in the correct manner, then this would have been less of a problem.  ::)

Bitcoin is not to be blamed for the weak software that are developed by third party wallet providers and exchanges.  >:(

I think this is a bit old, I remember reading about this a couple of months ago which mainly became popular after the Binance hack. I don't know if this is a new firm making the same estimate or not though. in any case the problem with that estimation is that they are not taking into consideration the amount that exchanges scammed themselves and called it a "hack". which is why it is so huge. many of the exchange hack cases were inside jobs or the exchange faking the hack anyways.
besides the total amount that individual users lost because of "malware", etc is so much smaller than this.

Yeah i have heard so many cases.. but thank God i didn't  loss any coin or any money.. well now people are trying to overcome the scams  and hacking.. so increase your knowledge  about Scams..

I hate to break this to you, but none of these methods are particularly new. The tech is mostly ready for these attacks too -- anti viruses are good enough for as long as you don't do anything too stupid, script blockers can protect your browsing experience, certain add-ons can alert you from visiting phishing sites, etc. The problem is that users themselves also have a role to play, and that's usually where the point of failure lies.

that number recorded by ciphertrace is massive and should definitely be alarming for us to realize how much is being lost. The biggest things we can do is really educate people about specific projects and how to protect their wallets ie. coins

As they say never say never.Your wallet can be hacked or stolen at any time.I very carefully treat my wallet,but still, the likelihood that my wallet can hack,is very high.

Those are some serious number. Security is a well important factor, especially when running an established cooperation.
Thanks for the heads up

Too many people using windows clicking phishing or dubious sites that install coin stealing malware.

The biggest problem is human habits, thats what they exploit successfully the most.

Perhaps using cold wallets helps, especially when keeping discipline about creating and using them in a safely manner (such as booting a live iso, etc).

Whatever the tech is there will be some loopholes that these thieves will find out to continue their bad activity. What people must do is on how to protect themselves and on how to become responsible internet users.

The article is one sided and it's making it look like crypto is a place mostly for bad people. They don't even want to discuss what's the bad side of hacking that happens mostly to the innocent bank account holders and depositors.

Well there is good and bad to every situation. There are good hackers just as much as there are bad ones. I think the point of the article was to openly discuss the most common ways that crypto can be or has been stolen

Yeah, but it also implies that the market is growing or the adoption is, hacks happens even in other industry and we can never eliminate this.
What these exchanges or other business would have to do is to educate themselves and learn not necessarily from their own mistakes but on the mistakes of others.

This is the reason why many people have negative connotations when it comes to crypto. They are reading one-sided articles demonstrating its negative side. Why not write an article which is not biased, with full positivity? But in any case, even if there are articles like this, still they can't ruin the foundation of crypto particularly bitcoin. I believe those who are writing such articles don't really know how to deal with bitcoin and altcoins, or who are really not into crypto. So they can say what they want to project to the masses.

The incentives for hackers, phishers and scammers are quite huge with the cryptocurrency marketplace that is why this has become like a multi-billion dollar operation and they are devoting solid, robust and expensive resources in order to get through walled infrastructure and steal all they can get. I am sure that as time goes on, more and more attempts will happen and there will always be big successes worthy of telling in the morning news. These people are always in tuned with the latest technologies and strategies even ahead of those whose business is providing security and anti-hacking systems. It is just sad that while we are offered the beautiful chance to make many industries evolved with the blockchain and cryptocurrency, there are also alongside with it people who are using their time and immense talents to steal and wreak havoc what others have built.

These kind of incidents are happening more and more frequently as these thefts are becoming more brazen the more cryptocurreny becomes put into the spotlight.
Especially stories like this one being reported by these major news media outlets such as cnbc and cnn from their financial "what to watch out for" shows.

Clipboard hijacking, website clones and social engineering would never stop unless everyone becomes aware of such activities and takes precaution to stop them from happening.
If people are losing money due to their unsafe and haphazard browsing habit, no one is going to sympathize on them.

These thefts are usually in people who enter into websites, download suspicious content. Such things help in spreading viruses. So always check before downloading or accepting anything

Ya it's tough because people always fall into the trap of free money and probably more so in this wild wild west of crypto. I have more confidence knowing cyber security firms like ciphertrace are doing what they can to negate these types of occurrences

The other week there was a company in Belgium that got completely shut down due to another crypto ransomware attack.
I think around 1000 people were technically unemployed for around 7 days or more.

This wasn't the first time something like this hadn't happened, but definitely the most significant attack of its sort.

Just mentioning it because it seems pretty crazy that something like that can happen and have such an impact.

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-halts-production-for-days-at-major-airplane-parts-manufacturer/

At least we know how they are doing it so we could do some countermeasure to avoid it,
We are lucky that we didn't fall victim to those hackers and we should be thankful for those information that has been given to us to keep our crypto safe.

These hacks and thefts are easily preventable only if people actually know how to take care of their online selves and not do anything rash and plain stupid such as downloading files on questionable websites, let alone visiting shady websites. The numbers would surely not rack up but then again, most people are still gullible to believe everything they see on the internet. As for exchange thefts, that's a completely different part of the equation that needs solving, and I do believe that stricter regulations wouldn't do the trick.

Don't blame this on blockchain/cryptocurrency.  Blame centralized platforms where most of the thefts occur.
Have you  heard of coins getting stolen from Bitcoin blockchain or other real Blockchain?
Well, you are covered as long as you live the right way on this space

As regards the clipboard hijacking, I have couple of applications that auto-clear my clipboard every few seconds. Guess this will not protect me effectively from the clipboard hijacking but it better than nothing.

In addition to that, Lake City in Florida paid $500,000 to a hacker/s -  https://www.zdnet.com/article/florida-city-fires-it-employee-after-paying-ransom-demand-last-week/

And then we have a recent Singaporean crypto exchange hack - https://twitter.com/BitrueOfficial/status/1144066874147131392

So those criminals are really stepping up the game and we are still in the middle of the year. So everyone should be very careful not to click any links so that you won't be victimised by this hackers.

The problem of crypto theft is one every crypto own should be very careful of, apply extra carefulness when accessing sites, app/softwares, and use reliable crypto wallets.

In crypto, huge amounts of money are constantly being stolen, but it’s not worth thinking about crypto being unsafe. After all, fiat is stolen much more, including through fraudulent acts.