TL;DR Breakdown
- Phishing attacks on crypto rises in 2021.
- Crypto price surge is one reasons there’s an uptick in phishing scams.
- Crypto space remains exposed to hack in different forms.
There has been an upsurge in phishing attacks targeted at crypto exchange and investors, which is currently 10 times the numbers in 2021. Similarly, phishing attacks on all other industries surged by 22 percent, according to a report by intelligence firm, PhishLab.
Per the report, most of the attacks are being promoted on social media, where most engagement and communication activities happen between crypto firms and their users.
These hackers impersonate crypto firms to carry out their operation as social media accounts for 54 percent of phishing attacks on the crypto industry.
John LaCour, Founder, and CTO of PhishLab, has said that hackers continue to operate and get more sophisticated.
The research also points that hackers are not likely to stop as they anticipate the crypto industry would remain aggressively targeted through social media.
Upsurge in phishing attacks on crypto
According to LaCour, the reason for the surge in phishing attacks is the growth in the crypto market. He noted that willingness by more financial institutions to enter the crypto space and Bitcoin price hitting a new All-Time High price in Q2 has called more attention to the industry and put scammers on their toes.
“With Bitcoin again above $45,000, and the entire crypto market worth over $2 trillion today, we expect we will continue to see a strong focus from hackers on this market in Q3,” said LaCour.
Towards quelling phishing attacks, certain positives in the research by PhishLab is governments’ improved operation towards recovering ransoms paid to hackers as with the Colonial Pipeline hackers.
Another way to quell the attack in the research is the crypto industry’s willingness to unite and provide a solution to the problem.
Beyond phishing attacks, the crypto space has been subject to several hacks lately.
Most recently, telecoms company T-Mobile confirmed that the company suffered a data breach with data of over 100 million people made vulnerable. The hackers are said to be seeking Bitcoin in return.
Last week, an unidentified hacker had also stolen more than $600 million worth of cryptocurrency from Poly Network, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform based in China.
The crypto space has been exposed to series of hacks and scams for years as the industry still seeks more advanced ways to end these attacks.
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