3 unique ways hackers are stealing your crypto!
Blockchain investigator Bitrace has identified three effective ways hackers gain access to crypto investors’ wallets — search engines such as Google and Bing, pasteboard hijacking and Liquidity mining and coin theft.
Crypto investors claiming “my coins disappeared suddenly” have been found to have recently downloaded crypto applications from unverified sources. Attackers use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to rank higher on internet searches, unknowingly coercing users to download and sign up to fake apps with backdoors.
Pastaboard hijacking involves the process of automatically grabbing or modifying previously copied text data from clipboards. The technique often skims seed phrases of users, which can be used later to access wallets and drain funds. Bitrace highlighted how a fake Telegram app was being used to replace the destination wallet address copied in the clipboard, causing users to send their tokens to the hacker.
Finally, the classic “high yield and low risk” liquidity scams also ranked as one of the three most popular scams resulting in the disappearance of tokens. Bitrace recommended three methods crypto users could use to trace the stolen funds, starting with tracing back the transaction fees. Investigators often find the hacker’s address by tracking down the source of the transaction fees that was paid to move the stolen funds.
Other ways investors can improve their chances of retrieving stolen funds include using blockchain explorers and professional tools. To know more about how to track stolen crypto, read Cointelegraph Research’s article on how blockchain analysis helps recover funds.
In addition to targeting investors, attackers often steal funds from crypto organizations as well. As part of the remediation of a recent exploit, Maestrobots, a group of cryptocurrency bots on the Telegram messenger app, paid a total of 610 ETH in its own revenue to cover all the user losses, worth more than $1 million.