Bitcoin has quickly gained its popularity since its release primarily due to its growing acceptance rate and steady increase in its value. Can you believe that the current cryptocurrency’s price has surged from $11,000 on Monday to almost $17,500 over the weekend? So with the increase in its value, it has gained the attention of Internet’s cyber-criminals who have acquired new ways of phishing attacks to steal and sell the coins and taking over the bitcoin accounts.
According to phishing tracking service CheckPhish, there has been an increase in the rise of the phishing attacks against Bitcoin-related sites and Bitcoin users over the past week. According to the report, Check Phish has found 5 domains trying to impersonate themselves as the Blockchain wallet service, one of the largest in the market. Apart from CheckPhish, several other reports regarding the phishing activities have been identified by security researchers.
Sweeeet… #Phishing in Russian for #Blockchain wallets pic.twitter.com/EHhEOKbvAi
— Dmitry Bestuzhev (@dimitribest) December 7, 2017
https://t.co/0LE6PW7k49 phishing at superbitcoin-blockchain[.]info cc @blockchain #phishing #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/mGf7XV0OSS
— x0rz (@x0rz) December 7, 2017
https://twitter.com/evilsocketbr/status/939300564235669504
#Phishing #Blockchain #cryptocurrency #Infosec #CyberSec @blockchain @malwrhunterteam
URL: hxxps://xn--blckchain-ml7d.com/wallet/login/
Host: marosnet.ru pic.twitter.com/WOWLH4IfKD— H3x@D3xs (@HexaDexs) December 6, 2017
Not only Blockchain, another popular Bitcoin exchange called Local Bitcoins was also reported as being targeted by the cybercriminals, reported by Domaindetect.io.
DomainDetect found multiple @LocalBitcoins #phishing sites at:
localbitcoins[.]group
localbitcoins[.]liveFind out more at https://t.co/EWNnrtcLTL pic.twitter.com/Ts4Mqs6s4A
— DomainDetect.io (@DomainDetect_io) December 6, 2017
This isn’t over yet. According to a report by cybersecurity firm, Fortinet, a new phishing was spotted that targets bitcoin investors by offering gunbot, a fake version of the bot trading tool, in the emails which install Orcus RAT malware on the computer and steals their Bitcoin information and empties the wallet.
