As the popularity around cryptocurrency has kept on growing in 2018, it has likewise enticing focus for money hungry tricksters to dispatch “digital currency giveaway tricks.”
Specialists at Proofpoint this week said they’ve watched a big rise in these tricks, which target owners of Ethereum and Bitcoin and requests from victims to send a small amount of the money in return for a substantially bigger payout in a similar digital currency.
These social engineering scams, which topped in April, are a simple route for criminals to go after the promotion around digital currency – with one scammer making more than $21,000, said Proofpoint.
“The success of this scam shows that threat actors continue to look for new ways to exploit the human factor – and people are inclined to fall for scams that can net them hot commodities like cryptocurrencies,” said specialists from Proofpoint in a post about the scam.
These tricks regularly begin with a tweet or an email, which allure potential casualties to send digital currency to a wallet with the guarantee that more will be sent back. These tweets may state things like “There’s an ongoing promotion by Ethereum that just started! I also wanted to share this awesome news! I’ve personally received 92 ETH after just sending 9.2 ETH!”
As con artists lay the social engineering basis, they will likewise create counterfeit Twitter accounts imitating trades, engineers, developers and big names to additionally incite clients to click.
