Monitorance #3

Your semi-monthly overview of what’s happening in the crypto security industry prepared by Nikolay Bocharov.

Eastern Europe’s Crypto Crime Landscape: Scams Dominance and Significant Ransomware Activity

The recently published review shows the main indicators related to fraudulent activity in the context of several characteristics. The charts data is quite clear and we can draw a few interesting conclusions.

First, regional crypto fraud is divided fairly evenly with Africa taking first place, as usual. At the same time, based on the characteristics of scam sites visits, Ukraine and Eastern Europe are also at the top. Western Europe is leading in terms of the amount of crypto sent to illegal addresses. Therefore, I can conclude that crypto-related fraud is global and borderless.

FCA Reports Over 220% Increase in Enquiries Relating to Crypto Scams

FCA identifies several reasons for the growth of such complaints such as the involvement of younger investors, who, due to their age, are more prone to taking risks. Other reasons include volatility and a great deal of investing ads online.

In my opinion, the main problem still comes from the low financial literacy and the hunt for ‘get rich quick’ schemes. In the minds of investors, cryptocurrency acts only as an accelerator.

Bitcoin Scammers Trick People Into Watching Fake Apple Event

So what did the scammers do? Before the official Apple’s “California Streaming” presentation, they streamed a video promising to distribute the previously purchased bitcoins. To receive the crypto asset, viewers first had to send a small amount to the specified address.

The scheme is trivial and painfully simple, but it will be effective from now to doomsday. As a result, about 165,000 people watched the video. It is still unclear how much money the fraudsters managed to raise.

Scammers Impersonate OpenSea Customer Support

Scammers invented a new way to steal NFTs and cryptocurrency from OpenSea users. This time fraudsters came up with a rather interesting and unique method. Users were asked to switch to a separate customer support service and turn on the screen sharing mode. Then, the scammers asked the users to sync a mobile wallet with Chrome’s extension and gained access to the wallet by scanning the QR-code and possessing the seed phrase.

The main tip we can give is to always stay critical of any actions of third parties and don’t trust anyone with your financial assets or personal data. Be aware even if you’re talking to the official support: the moment you start having doubts, end the communication immediately.

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Originally published at https://blog.mercuryo.io.