[2017-11-24] Intense Web Scans Going on for Bitcoin and Ethereum Wallets

[iamTom123]

With both Bitcoin and Ethereum price hitting all-time highs in the past seven days, cyber-criminals have stepped up efforts to search and steal funds stored in these two cryptocurrencies. These mass Internet scanning campaigns have been recently picked up by various honeypots installed by security researchers across the Internet.

Scans for Bitcoin wallet archives. The first of these, aimed at Bitcoin owners, was picked up by security researcher Didier Stevens over the weekend, just two days before Bitcoin was about to jump from $7,000 to over $8,000. Stevens' honeypot detected a bot that was searching server paths for file names specific to Bitcoin wallet apps. Stevens, who posted his findings on the SANS ISC InfoSec Forums, says he recorded scans for the following file types:

wallet - Copy.dat
wallet.dat
wallet.dat.1
wallet.dat.zip
wallet.tar
wallet.tar.gz
wallet.zip
wallet_backup.dat
wallet_backup.dat.1
wallet_backup.dat.zip
wallet_backup.zip

With Bitcoin's price going from $200 two years ago to nearly $8,200 today, readers should expect crooks to continue to scan the Internet for Bitcoin wallet archives accidentally left online. Access to such archives will allow crooks access to victims' funds. The same thing can be said about Ethereum. Read more of this here...

Bitcoin and Ethereum are currently rising and with this as the backdrop, hackers, phishers and scammers are all around the web searching for possible victims that they can find and rob them of their coins by exploiting any possible weakness they can find. This is one of the few things that I really hate with the online platform we are all using. While we can easily communicate with other people from any side of the globe, we are also exposing ourselves of the many risks because there are those whose focus and talents are dedicated on punching on anyone they can find. Such is the big reality we have to deal with. We have to fortify our security habits so we can avoid getting into malicious traps. 

What are the things you are doing to ensure that your coins are safe (aside from buying an offline wallet)?

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[Guardian.P]

This is very bad news and quite serious, Many people are burned at this, and they will talk about the failure of others than cause distrust, which will lead not only to complaints, it will affect the rhetoric of other people. In my opinion, the authorities will not stand aside and take measures that will only toughen regulation in different countries

[Lucius]

Given the price and practically complete anonymity stealing of BTC and ETH becomes a lucrative job for hackers to deal with.Every day we can see that people report hacking of their wallets,though they think that they have taken very good security measures.I do not think we are aware of all the ways hackers use with the intent to steal BTC,ETH or any other coin.

What we can do to secure our desktop wallets is to have clean PC without any virus/malware and use only best security software to keep our PC clean all time.For online wallets use strong password+2FA and also e-mail with unique and strong paswword.

But best way so far is to use hardware wallets,especially if you receive/send coins on daily basis.Others option is paper wallet for cold storage and to use two PC where one is never connected to internet(cold storage wallet), and second one with watch only wallet for broadcasting transaction.

[warrior333]

I do not support offline storage of coins. It seems to me that a single user computer it is always easier to hack hackers than online wallet. I never keep my bitcoins in accounts at the exchanges. My wallet has never been hacked. Hacking attempts of accounts on the exchanges happen all the time.

[Kemarit]

Now that bitcoin and Ethereum price is really surging ahead. We need to be very cautious of our every moved involving our wallets. As I already suspected before, hackers are really targeting crypto because of the huge money. They will take every step to steal someone's wallet as shows by the intense web scans that the report was seeing in the last couple of weeks. I wouldn't surprise if 1 - 10 wallets are being stolen like every 5 minutes by the hackers. We can see threads after thread been opening complaining how they lost they coins to the hackers. So its really up to us to really protect our wallet and the privates keys. Don't save it to your desktop or anything that is connected to the internet.

[Gotottack]

With both Bitcoin and Ethereum price hitting all-time highs in the past seven days, cyber-criminals have stepped up efforts to search and steal funds stored in these two cryptocurrencies. These mass Internet scanning campaigns have been recently picked up by various honeypots installed by security researchers across the Internet.

Scans for Bitcoin wallet archives. The first of these, aimed at Bitcoin owners, was picked up by security researcher Didier Stevens over the weekend, just two days before Bitcoin was about to jump from $7,000 to over $8,000. Stevens' honeypot detected a bot that was searching server paths for file names specific to Bitcoin wallet apps. Stevens, who posted his findings on the SANS ISC InfoSec Forums, says he recorded scans for the following file types:

wallet - Copy.dat
wallet.dat
wallet.dat.1
wallet.dat.zip
wallet.tar
wallet.tar.gz
wallet.zip
wallet_backup.dat
wallet_backup.dat.1
wallet_backup.dat.zip
wallet_backup.zip

With Bitcoin's price going from $200 two years ago to nearly $8,200 today, readers should expect crooks to continue to scan the Internet for Bitcoin wallet archives accidentally left online. Access to such archives will allow crooks access to victims' funds. The same thing can be said about Ethereum. Read more of this here...

Bitcoin and Ethereum are currently rising and with this as the backdrop, hackers, phishers and scammers are all around the web searching for possible victims that they can find and rob them of their coins by exploiting any possible weakness they can find. This is one of the few things that I really hate with the online platform we are all using. While we can easily communicate with other people from any side of the globe, we are also exposing ourselves of the many risks because there are those whose focus and talents are dedicated on punching on anyone they can find. Such is the big reality we have to deal with. We have to fortify our security habits so we can avoid getting into malicious traps. 

What are the things you are doing to ensure that your coins are safe (aside from buying an offline wallet)?

Certainly what I do is withdraw my Bitcoins when I am satisfied of its price and convert it to fiat currency so I can store my money in a physical bank. This move may not do good to a lot, especially with those who believe that investing is key more than that of mere saving but all I am really after for is sure money. This way, I can also do away with online scams. 

[pixie85]

wallet - Copy.dat
wallet.dat
wallet.dat.1
wallet.dat.zip
wallet.tar
wallet.tar.gz
wallet.zip
wallet_backup.dat
wallet_backup.dat.1
wallet_backup.dat.zip
wallet_backup.zip

That's a great reminder of what you shouldn't do guys. If you have a wallet, try to keep it on an offline machine most of the time. Just buy a hard drive and unplug it when you're not planning to send any transactions or even better buy yourself a machine to be used only for your cryptocurrency wallets.
Second thing is naming the files. If you are planning to save your wallet backup, rename it! The best way is to change both the name and its extension.

[Qartersa]

Perhaps it is really best to make sure all your money are in tact by securing it in an offline wallet. Scams come in all forms but it is less likely to happen with people who use offline wallets. Nonetheless, this does not totally eradicate the existence of scammers because you will fall in its bandwagon should you fail to exercise extraordinary diligence as to your way of handling your money. You have to be very careful because this is the drawback of too much technology that digitally connects people globally.