As cryptocurrency assets remain in a bear market, many speculators are reluctant to look at their accounts--just too depressing. Scammers have been exploiting that inattention to run cashout scams against account holders.
Cashout scam targets forgotten crypto accounts.
Sift has published a report finding that cybercriminals are targeting neglected cryptocurrency accounts amidst the drop in cryptocurrency’s value over the past few months:
“As cryptocurrency prices have plummeted in recent months, Sift’s Trust and Safety Architects uncovered a new scam targeting crypto account holders—many of whom are no longer checking their accounts frequently due to crypto’s loss in value. The Sift team observed on both dark web marketplaces and deep web forums on Telegram that fraudsters are seeking each other out to funnel funds from hacked bank accounts and crypto wallets.
“In this crypto cashout scam, one fraudster who is looking to launder stolen funds solicits the help of another fraudster who has successfully taken over connected bank accounts and crypto wallets. Once they team up, the cybercriminals load the stolen funds into the hijacked bank account and then into the corresponding stolen crypto wallet, before draining the funds and splitting the profits.”
Brittany Allen, Trust and Safety Architect at Sift, stated, “Account takeover attacks are proving to be a primary attack method among fraudsters in our challenging economic environment. Adding insult to injury, cybercriminals are leveraging automation via bots and scripts to launch ATO attacks at scale, often forcing businesses to choose between introducing excessive friction in their user experience or being consumed by fraud.”