In recent times where digital currency scams have picked up the pace, yet another bitcoin scam has been discovered where the threat actors have leveraged the PII to trick their potential targets into enlisting to a dubious investment site.
Across the globe, various renowned websites were imitated in this three-stage fraud. These websites consisted of articles and interviews of celebrities praising and promoting a cryptocurrency platform. Such content even had fake comments on it to make the content look more genuine to the victims.
This setup was designed to lure users to register for a crypto investment scam.
Some Hard-hitting facts about the scam –
- Researchers discovered around 250,000 unique records of potential victims.
- A large number of victims belonged to the United Kingdom, followed by South Africa, Australia, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, and Spain among other countries.
- This scam displayed similarities with the Bitcoin Evolution scam that was reported earlier in the year. The major difference was that this scam resulted in the exposure of a massive amount of sensitive information.
Some other bitcoin scams –
- To lure victims with using celebrity or brand names, scammers were found using bitcoin vanity addresses that allow users to add a custom word in their wallet addresses.
- To run promotions for this scam, three YouTube channels were hijacked and renamed to ‘SpaceX’ or ‘SpaceX Live.
- In order to steal bitcoin, last month scammers created a site impersonating the legitimate note sharing service privnote[dot]com
Researchers are discovering are bitcoin investment scams on a regular basis and this year its been a rising trend. However, this scam make it evident that the threat actors have upgraded their tactics and techniques. It provides malevolent entities with many opportunities to conduct further attacks and the amount of personal information leaked is substantial.
Consequently, our security experts advise users to stay vigilant and employ caution while planning to indulge in any such online schemes that seem too good to be true.
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