Australians filed 1,810 reports of cryptocurrency-related scams in 2019, collectively totaling more than $21.6 million AU ($14.9 million USD). According to a study by Scamwatch, an arm of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, younger Australians aged 25 to 34 were those most heavily affected by crypto investment scams. According to the report: “Cloud mining farms became a common adaptation of this type of scam. Most were Ponzi schemes, with no real cryptocurrency involved.” It goes on to characterize cloud crypto mining as an “an incredibly resource-intensive activity” that relies on powerful computing systems to mine a coin. This is …

John Cantrell, Bitcoin and Lightning Network project developer, recently revealed he had successfully hacked a Bitcoin address. His article, however, received a number of responses with many concluding Bitcoin isn’t secure. Cantrell felt people missed the point of the exercise so, in a tweet thread on June 19, explained and ensured people that despite hacking a wallet, Bitcoin is still safe. Takes forever to crack the wallet According to Cantrell, bitcoins stored in a wallet generated from a 12-word mnemonic is secure. The only reason why he was able to hack the Bitcoin wallet was because the wallet’s owner publicly …

A study by cybersecurity vendor, Cyfirma, warned about a massive phishing campaign that will be launched by the North Korean hacker group, Lazarus, on June 21. The campaign will allegedly target six nations and over 5 million businesses and individuals. According to the report published on June 18, Lazarus will subject Singapore, Japan, India, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and the United States to a massive phishing campaign. Hackers will reportedly attempt to take advantage of people receiving payments established by several countries in an attempt to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis. A campaign to collect cryptocurrencies? Lazarus seems to be …

The hottest Ethereum topic in June so far has been mysterious transactions that involved millions of dollars being paid to transfer small-to-medium amounts of Ether (ETH) — an activity which normally doesn’t cost more than a few dozen cents. Researchers have managed to track down the potential victim — a suspicious South Korean crypto exchange — which either experienced a major bug or was threatened by hackers in a very sophisticated way. So what are the main theories behind what happened, and will these millions of dollars be returned to their owner after all? What happened? A chain of Ether …

A study by risk solutions provider, Kroll, indicated that a group of hackers from Russia managed to file fraudulent unemployment claims with the Washington State Employment Security Department, or ESD, through a ransomware attack against a healthcare provider in the US. According to research published on June 17, the firm investigated browser history logs that the cybercriminals reportedly navigated to various Gmail accounts. They then activated two profiles on the ESD site using these email addresses. International organized cybercrime groups appearing in the scene The ransomware attack, launched on May 12, is a Mamba category exploit which uses full disk …

F2Pool, a Chinese mining pool that recently mined an Ether (ETH) transaction with an abnormal transaction fee of 2,310 ETH, has returned 90% of the fee to its sender. Announcing the news on June 18, F2Pool said that the MiningPoolHub, the original owner of the address behind the transaction, has received back 2,079 ETH, or about $480,000. The mining pool specified the transaction ID showing that F2Pool has returned the amount to its original owner. In order to complete the reimbursement transaction, the original address holder had to sign the new address using the private key of the original address. …

After a week of searches, it appears that the culprit behind at least two of the anomalous high fee transactions on Ether (ETH) was found. As reported by Chinese blockchain analytics company PeckShield on June 16, the originating address appears to be coming from Korean platform GoodCycle, a recently launched peer-to-peer exchange that provides “investment” opportunities to its users. According to PeckShield, this platform shows all the signs of a Ponzi scheme, which would explain its rapid rise in popularity. The analysts conducted a thorough blockchain analysis and found that a wallet beginning with “0xcdd6a2b” was the origin of the …

Last week, the crypto community spotted transaction fees of up to $2.6 million featured in several transactions on the Ethereum network. Vitalik Buterin has since suggested that the abnormous fees “may actually be blackmail," but some researchers have now challenged that claim. Blackmail theory The first suspicious transfer took place on June 10, when $2.6 million in fees was paid to move just 0.55 Ether (ETH). Within 24 hours, a second transaction of 350 ETH was made from the same wallet, spending the exact same amount — $2.6 million — in gas. The next day, the Ethereum blockchain processed a …

Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto candidate and chief scientist at NChain, has addressed the recent allegations about him hacking the now-defunct exchange Mt. Gox. Last week, a lead maintainer of Monero (XMR) privacy coin Ricardo Spagni tweeted out court documents suggesting Craig Wright’s affiliation with a Mt. Gox-related Bitcoin (BTC) wallet known as “1Feex”: “Just so we’re clear, Craig Wright has just openly admitted (via his lawyers) to be the guy that stole 80k BTC from Mtgox.” Spagni’s tweet followed a string of letters sent by Wright’s lawyers on June 12, where they stressed that their client owns 80 …

Cybercriminals have reportedly created a fake site version of the legitimate encrypted self-destructing notes service privnote.com. The fake version can be shared with other users to steal Bitcoin. According to a June 14 report from KrebsOnSecurity, the creators of the encrypted notes service complained about a fake clone site, privnotes.com, whose scam scheme consists of the following: “Any messages containing Bitcoin addresses will be automatically altered to include a different Bitcoin address, as long as the Internet addresses of the sender and receiver of the message are not the same.” Privnote.com said in the report that the phishing site does …

Over the past week, the crypto community has been left befuddled by three small Ether (ETH) transfers that incurred millions of dollars in fees. However, new reports have given weight to speculation that the seven-figure fees may have been deliberately spent as part of a blackmail scheme targeting a cryptocurrency exchange, with Chinese blockchain analysis firm PeckShield concluding that the transactions were likely resulting from extortion attempts. Seven-figures ETH fees attributed to extortion On June 12, Chinese media outlet Chainnews reported that analysis firm PeckShield has concluded that the string of multi-million dollar fees that were paid by hackers seeking …

Californian Richard Yuan Li, 20, has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in SIM-swap attacks targeting at least 20 individuals, as well as the attempted extortion of a New Orleans-based doctor and cryptocurrency investor known only as ‘Investor A.’ Li is believed to have collaborated with others from January 2018 until February 2019 to defraud numerous victims through SIM-swapping attacks, with some of the co-conspirators remaining unknown to the United States Attorney’s Office. SIM-swaps involve rerouting a victim’s SIM to a phone in possession of the attackers, allowing them to gain access to personal information …