Crypto Phishing Attacks Are on the Rise, Increased by 40% Last Year

In the realm of cryptocurrency-related cyber-attacks, ne'er-do-wells have seemingly abated their use of customary financial threats like banking PC and mobile malware and, instead, have veered their focus towards phishing.

According to Kaspersky, a Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, cryptocurrency phishing attacks observed a 40% year-on-year growth in 2022, with 5,040,520 crypto phishing attacks detected in the year as opposed to 3,596,437 in 2021.

A typical phishing attack involves bad actors reaching out to investors through bogus websites and communication channels that emulate legitimate companies. Investors are then prompted to share private information such as private keys, which ultimately grants attackers unauthorized access to cryptocurrency wallets and assets.

Though Kaspersky could not prognosticate if the trend would magnify in 2023, phishing attacks persist with momentum in 2023. Recently, in March, hardware cryptocurrency wallet provider Trezor issued an alert against attempts to pilfer users' crypto by bamboozling investors into entering their recovery phrase on a fake Trezor website.

According to a Kaspersky survey conducted in 2022, 14% of respondents reported falling victim to cryptocurrency phishing. Although giveaway scams and counterfeit wallet phishing pages remain prevalent phishing tactics, cybercriminals are constantly refining their techniques to target cryptocurrency users.

Kaspersky noted that "crypto still remains a symbol of getting rich quick with minimal effort," which attracts scammers to revolutionize their techniques and stories to allure unwary crypto investors.

Investors of Arbitrum were recently subjected to a phishing link through its official Discord server. A hacker purportedly commandeered the Discord account of one of Arbitrum's developers, which was then used to disseminate a counterfeit announcement with a phishing link.

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