Interview candidates needed for academic research on wrench attacks

[jasdevatcam]

My colleagues and I are analysing cryptocurrency related “wrench attacks” (physical attacks or threats targeted at cryptocurrency owners) for an academic project.

One of our objectives is to understand the dynamics of these attacks and therefore we are interested in interviewing cryptocurrency owners that are familiar or have been exposed to these attacks. Would any of you be interested in being interviewed as part of our research or do you know someone who would like to be interviewed?

Please dm me if you are interested so I can provide more information about the interview schedule and the measures we are taking to ensure confidentiality of our research participants.

Thanks in advance!

[Nwada001]

Welcome to the forum.
Your form of research requires an ora or one-on-one interaction with attack victims. For security and confidentiality reasons, many might find it difficult to reveal their identities and cases of attack as a result of not knowing to what length those collected data will be used. Privacy actually matters a lot.

But I think it will be more of an interacting section and informative if you can throw some direct questions to the floor. Lots of members will be willing to discuss and help based on personal encounters with such victims or direct victims. And when throwing your questions, it should be specific to which coin you are referring to. If your research is a case study on Bitcoin or altcoins, they are two different forms of currency that might look like they are of the same purpose, but they are not.

[jasdevatcam]

Thanks a lot for your response and feedback!

I agree, privacy is very important for us as well. Therefore we have taken several steps to ensure the confidentiality of our research participants. One of these measures is to apply pseudonyms to the data that participants provide. Additionally, we do not retain or disclose any identifiable information about any participants.

Our research is focused on both Bitcoin and altcoins and we're interested in understanding the following main topics:

• Establishing how a $5 wrench attack happens (how did attackers find you and/or why did they target you in particular?) and the subsequent actions taken to report an attack (if any).
  
• Physical and digital security practices and habits taken by users to avoid becoming a wrench attack victim.

[NeuroticFish]

how did attackers find you and/or why did they target you in particular?

I expect most of the victims don't know why they've got targeted, although I expect the reason is either them bragging about how many coins they have or other ways they've displayed their wealth, either in their neighborhood or on the internet. The few cases I've read about were either known people on the internet, either known "business people".
However, I would be surprised if people would approach you tell their stories. I expect that remembering that is painful and brings no benefit for them.

But yeah, it's just wild guesses. Good luck!

[Z-tight]

Establishing how a $5 wrench attack happens (how did attackers find you and/or why did they target you in particular?) and the subsequent actions taken to report an attack (if any).

It is obvious how a $5 wrench attack happens, attackers force you to give up your coins to them, they can use a wrench, gun or any other weapon to threaten you to hand over your keys and funds to them. There are many ways an attacker can target you, one way is if you are a person that talks about your BTC's to many people, it can get you exposed, another way is if an attacker wants to just rob you of other valuables, and finds traces that you own BTC, they can force you to hand over the funds to them.

Physical and digital security practices and habits taken by users to avoid becoming a wrench attack victim.

- Do not tell untrusted people that you have BTC's
- Use a passphrase to create plausible deniability, and make sure to fund your "dummy" wallet so the attacker would believe that is all that you have
- Good operational security is important

[Casdinyard]

My colleagues and I are analysing cryptocurrency related “wrench attacks” (physical attacks or threats targeted at cryptocurrency owners) for an academic project.

One of our objectives is to understand the dynamics of these attacks and therefore we are interested in interviewing cryptocurrency owners that are familiar or have been exposed to these attacks. Would any of you be interested in being interviewed as part of our research or do you know someone who would like to be interviewed?

Please dm me if you are interested so I can provide more information about the interview schedule and the measures we are taking to ensure confidentiality of our research participants.

Thanks in advance!

I'm quite interested in participating for this little research project of yours. I've been a victim of this once (although I don't think the attack is specifically targeted to me but is more likely a copy-pasted script that was sent to other countless people in the industry), and me being the snotty-nosed crypto newbie that I am back then, I kind of fell for it for a while, pressing on the link they sent and answering questions that they prepared for me "or else they will take control of my account" and "collect every asset I deposited there for evidence" lmao. I'd be more than happy to expound on this if you'd count me in as one of your participants as I think wrench and coordinated attacks from scammers in this industry are more common than what people are led to think, but it's talked about so little in favor of the more sensational attacks that would catch the people's eye in the headlines.

[vv181]

There is a compilation of targetedknown physical attacks directed to bitcoin/cryptocurrency owners here: https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks/blob/master/README.md. Some of the victims' names are listed, so maybe you try to find and approach them. Or maybe see the description, the news might cover what causes the attack.

In order to gain more samples, I suggest you also make a thread here other on another board, say, the Altcoin Discussion board. Maybe there will be a member who suits your need. Besides, reaching out to a wider cryptocurrency community in other places would be a good idea. We know that the general audiences of cryptocurrencies user are on Reddit and Twitter.

[jasdevatcam]

Thanks a lot everyone! This is very helpful.