Criminals have started staging phishing campaigns having discovered that Bitcoin can provide an easier way to steal, says Cisco’s OpenDNS security team after they revealed a complex phishing scheme aimed at collecting user credentials from various Bitcoin-related services.
The discovery was made after the price of the digital currency rose by over 58% to reach about $775 in the last month (though it has dropped in a week) based on several factors. The latter includes the finite and constrained supply of Bitcoin, its pending supply growth reduction next month, the anticipated supply drop which will drive demand and more people using and wanting Bitcoin. AdWords campaigns drove traffic towards the phishing pages
The recent Bitcoin frenzy, the team says, drew the attention of traders, economists and bankers as well as criminals.
The team says on their website: “Thus, we were not too surprised when on June 9 2016 OpenDNS detected with our model NLPRank a new phishing attack on the domain Blockchain[.info] wallet targeting the cloud-based Bitcoin wallet company blockchain[.] info.” They noted that the first signs of the phishing campaign were noticed by security researchers from Cyren at the beginning June, when a phishing campaign utilizing the domain blocklchain[.]info as its web address began to spread using Google AdWords. "Blockchain" or "bioklchain"?
Cyren says it detected the investment pattern of a phishing campaign – rental of botnets, purchase of exploit kits, and the acquisition of compromised site lists – as its attack vector is pay-per-click advertising via Google AdWords .
The security researchers from CYREN explain: “The Ad showed up in response to searches for ‘Blockchain’ – a Bitcoin related term. Close analysis of the advert shows that the link is actually to bioklchain.info – but at a casual glance the link appears to lead to the legitimate ‘blockchain.info.’ Interestingly, Bitcoin […]
