A 20-year-old man has been formally charged in a U.S. supreme court indictment over 52 cases of SIM-swap identity and crypto theft.
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Victims Sue AT&T, T-Mobile Over ‘SIM Swap’ Crypto Hacks
A cryptocurrency-focused law firm in the U.S. says it has filed lawsuits against AT&038T and T-Mobile on behalf of victims of SIM swapping hacks.
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Scammers Use Cryptocurrency ATMs to Target Potentially Vulnerable Victims
Australian police have been informed of a scam in which the perpetrators are requesting people deposit funds for them at cryptocurrency ATMs. It is thought that those behind the scam are targeting newly-arrived migrants who are unsure if such requests are genuine since they are navigating an entirely foreign system of taxation for the first time.
Elaborate Cryptocurrency Scam Generates Tens of Thousands of Dollars
According to a report in the U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper, there have been four victims of the Australian crypto ATM scam to date. All of those defrauded out of funds were based in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
The scam itself involves those behind it contacting potential victims with a request for outstanding taxes. It states that these must be paid directly into one of the city’s cryptocurrency ATM machines and sent to an unknown address.
Police investigating the scam have reason to believe that those behind it are targeting newly-arrived economic migrants. This demographic is much more likely to be compliant with such a request since refusal to adhere to similar, legitimate requests could negatively impact on the immigration process.
As strangers in a foreign land, the victims are also much less likely to question correspondence supposedly from the government, since they have no yardstick to compare above board requests from authorities to fraudulent ones.
The victims were under the impression that they would be detained if they did not comply to requests for deposits at the crypto ATM in Braybrook, Melbourne. This scaremongering tactic is reported to have netted the scammers an undisclosed five-figure sum.
The Daily Mail also reports on a second variation of the same scam. This time, those behind it tell victims that they have been alerted to a debt of outstanding taxes by the federal police or private accountants.
Katherine Lehpamer, a local police representative, said of the scam:
“Anyone getting a call along these lines should make inquiries with the relevant authority before paying any money… We believe there are a number of victims who may be here on visas or not aware that authorities would never tell them to deposit money into an ATM.”
Scams involving cryptocurrency are nothing new. They come in literally all different guises. Some involve the promotion of fraudulent companies, others are orchestrated by vast armies of Twitter-based robots. Most of these rely on the victims’ own greed being their downfall.
The Australian ATM scam is particularly devious, however, since it plays on newly-arrived migrants’ fears of being returned to the land which they have often worked incredibly hard to escape. Since they will have every intention of doing things by the book in their new home, they are much more likely to fall victim to such a scheme.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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Ethereum Blockchain Being Used to Help Hurricane Victims with Insurance Payouts
Between Harvey, Irma, Maria, and now Florence, the United States has seen an unprecedented amount of disastrous natural disasters that have devastated communities and have left billions of dollars’ worth of damages in their wake. Ethereum’s blockchain is now potentially being used to solved many of the resulting problems.
The sheer number of insurance requests to cover things like damaged or lost homes and cars has posed a huge issue for the insurance industry, as they have to rapidly approve requests for funds in order to replace or repair any home/auto damages caused by the hurricanes. It now appears that the industry is turning to blockchain technology in order to increase their efficiency.
Using Blockchain is the Next Step for the Insurance Industry
The current process of approving the vast quantity of requests that come following a natural disaster is quite complicated and starts with a team of adjusters and agents working to filter out fraudulent requests from people trying to capitalize on the disaster. The insurance companies also have to coordinate with reinsurance companies, that help to cover the windfall of expenses that follow these types of disasters.
Due to the convoluted and inefficient process of accepting insurance claims, especially following disasters like hurricanes, many insurance analysts and blockchain experts see it as the best solution to fix the industry’s problems.
A newly founded Switzerland-based blockchain startup, called Etherisc, is working to provide solutions to the inefficiencies of the insurance industry by using the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts to automate certain processes that are currently done manually by employees. In addition to being cheaper, the automated solutions will also reduce fraud and human error that can cost insurance companies a fortune.
If Etherisc’s system is widely adopted, it would ultimately lead to automated insurance payouts, which would allow victims of natural disasters to secure funding to pay for the resulting expenses, which include hotel/motel costs, car rentals, and repairs to water or infrastructure damages to their homes.
Quick insurance payments are particularly relevant to families or individuals who have their homes completely destroyed, as the rebuilding process can take a significant amount of time, and the faster it begins the faster they can get back to a normal living situation.
Etherisc’s co-founder, Renat Khasanshyn, spoke to Forbes about the use of their systems for pending disasters, like the category four hurricane, Florence, that is barreling towards the east coast at over 140 miles per hour:
“We’d love to offer policies in Virginia. Yet launching a product in multiple locations is no easy task,” Khansanshyn said.
Etherisc has raised .6 million since its founding in 2017 through an Initial Coin Offering and is in the early stages of offering their Ethereum-based solutions to insurance companies. If used, their blockchain system could save insurance companies tens of millions of dollars and could help the hundreds of thousands of people that file insurance claims following disasters.
While speaking about the 225,000 insurance claims filed by those victimized by hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, Khasanshyn said that, “Our plan is to begin writing policies for the next hurricane season in Puerto Rico.”
Featured image from Shutterstock
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Binance Donates $1 Million to Japanese Flood Victims
Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is showing its humanitarian side by donating million to the victims in West Japan that were affected by the heavy rains on 7 July 2018. News outlets in the country have reported a death toll surpassing 70 people, with over 40 still missing.
Binance Makes Million Disaster Relief Donation In West Japan
Digital currency operator Binance, founded by Changpeng Zhao in 2017, has announced a major donation for the sake of the victims of this week’s massive flooding and landslides triggered by torrential rains in western Japan. The death count is now at 72 people and over 40 remain missing while rescue operations continue in disaster-hit areas with 54,000 personnel from the police, fire departments, the Self-Defense Forces and the Japan Coast Guard.
Hiroshima, Ehime, and Okayama were the hardest-hit areas, followed by Yamaguchi, Kyoto, Gifu, Shiga, Osaka, Hyogo, Kochi and Fukuoka prefectures.
Binance, which is on its way to record between 0 million and billion profit in 2018 after reporting 0 million in revenue in the first semester, is helping out the ones in need with its disaster relief donation of million. The operator has also called for its cryptocurrency friends and partners to join in the initiative.
To contribute in cryptocurrency, one can make an anonymous donation by sending ETH or ERC20 tokens directly to the Binance donation address, which can be found on the company’s announcement. A named donation would require an email sent to donations@binance.com including the name, the amount donated, the address from which you the donation is sent, and the transaction ID.
“All outgoing transactions from the Binance donation address will be explained by Binance and used for charity purposes only.”
The digital currency exchange, which generates an average of .5 billion in daily trade volume, wasn’t the first to make charity donations. In late March 2018, San Francisco-based Ripple supported U.S. public schools through DonorsChoose.Org by donating million in XRP. Ripple was able to fund every single classroom project request on the nonprofit’s website, fulfilling 35,647 requests from 28,210 public school teachers in a total of 16,561 public schools, which is 1 in 6 of all the public schools in America.
According to Fidelity Charitable 2017 Giving Report, the Bitcoin community has significantly increased the amount and number of Bitcoin donations the organization has received. During the first semester of 2017, the total contributions made in the form of Bitcoin to Fidelity Charitable stood at million, which is million more than all donations made by the community in the whole year of 2016.
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Coinsecure Confirms Victims of Recent Hack Will be Refunded
Crypto exchanges have different responsibilities to their clients. In the case of a hack or theft, they need to refund their customers. Coinsecure, an Indian Bitcoin trading platform, will do exactly that. The recent theft affecting several users forces the company to reimburse victims out of their own pocket.
The Coinsecure Theft Investigation
Coinsecure was recently hacked by an unknown assailant. During this theft, the company lost 438.318 Bitcoin, valued at around .3 million. This money has been taken from the company’s Bitcoin wallet. Rumor has it this may have been an inside job by company CSO Dr. Amitabh Saxena.
Official complaints registered with police authorities clearly implicate Saxena as the culprit. It is unclear if there is any evidence to make those charges stick. With the money still not being located, the investigation will continue for some time to come. Coinsecure even announced a 10% finder’s fee to its community for anyone who can help recover the money in question.
Given Bitcoin’s lack of privacy and anonymity, finding the money should not be difficult. That is, assuming the money has not been converted to another cryptocurrency with anonymity features. Additionally, the money may have already been converted to fiat currencies. For now, the attempt to recover the funds is still in full effect.
Repaying Affected Customers
While this process takes place, Coinsecure has made it clear they will reimburse customers in one way or another. Option one is more favorable as it would result in the stolen money being returned. If that were to happen, customer balances will be corrected by the exchange automatically. The other option will work as follows:
“However, if recovery of siphoned BTC is not possible, then we will apply the lock in rates as of the 9th of April, 2018. 10% of the Coin Holding Balance will be refunded in BTC and 90% will be returned in INR.”
It is not the first time a cryptocurrency exchange gets hacked and fails to retrace the funds immediately. Earlier this year, Japanese firm Coincheck went through a similar problem. They also refunded customers out of their own pocket while the investigation was still ongoing. This further confirms cryptocurrency exchanges are maturing and have sufficient liquidity to deal with such incidents.
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Coincheck Exchange to Compensate Hack Victims From Next Week
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck has said it plans to compensate victims of its January hack starting next week.
CoinDesk
Ransomware Creators Having Funds Stolen; Victims Locked Out
Ransomware distributors and other cybercriminals expecting an easy payday are having their illicitly obtained “earnings” stolen by likeminded individuals, who are hijacking the ransom payments before they are received and redirecting them into their own cryptocurrency wallets. At first glance, this may not seem like a huge problem — attackers getting a taste of their own medicine in becoming victims of cyber-theft themselves. But these attacks are also preventing ransomware victims from unlocking their encrypted files, because, as far as those distributing the malware are concerned, they never received their ransom payment.
Ransomware is a huge problem for internet users across the globe. It’s a form of malicious software —malware — which encrypts documents on a computer or across a network. Victims can often only regain access to their encrypted files and/or networks by paying a ransom to the criminals behind the ransomware.
Uncovered by researchers at Proofpoint, this scheme is believed to be the first of its kind. So how are these attacks actually happening? Cybercriminals are using a Tor proxy browser (Tor is a web browser designed for anonymous web surfing) to carry out middle-man attacks, stealing the cryptocurrency payments the victims of ransomware are attempting to send to their attackers.
The attacks take advantage of the way ransomware distributors have victims use Tor to buy the cryptocurrency they need to make the ransom payment. While many ransomware notes provide instructions on how to download and run the Tor browser, others provide links to a Tor proxy, regular websites that translate Tor traffic into normal web traffic (so the process of paying is as straightforward as possible for the victim).
What’s been happening is one of the Tor gateways being used is altering cryptocurrency wallet addresses in the proxy, and redirecting the payment into other accounts, rather than those of the ransomware attacker. Proofpoint researchers uncovered that the proxy can redirect payments made by victims of several forms of ransomware, including LockeR, GlobeImposter, and Sigma.
As noted above, the victims, like the state of Alabama, are the ultimate losers in this scenario. Not only are they paying thousands of dollars in ransom demands, they’re not even getting their files back. These middle-man attacks mean the ransomware distributors don’t get the funds they demand from the victims and therefore don’t help said victims unlock their encrypted files.
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Fake Cryptocurrency App Lures Victims Into Installing Ransomware
Cyber researchers at Fortinet have managed to unearth a cryptocurrency app that is actually a ransomware in disguise.
The cybersecurity firm, in its report, indicated SpriteCoin app to be a new kind of ransomware technique. It poses as a “sure-to-be-profitable” cryptocurrency, prompts targets into installing it for profits, and encrypts their files. The ransomware asks 0.3 units of Monero (~0) to counterbalance the attack with a decryption key. But once the targets pay the sum, they further get harassed by receiving more malware attacks.
SpiteCoin seems to have an embedded SQLite engine. The revelation has led researchers to believe that the database management system is being used to store harvested credentials. The Fortinet report explains:
“The ransomware first looks to harvest Chrome credentials, and if it finds nothing it then moves on and tries to access the Firefox credential store. It then looks for specific files to encrypt. These files are then encrypted with [a] .encrypted file extension.”
In simple words, the passwords stored in target’s Chrome or/and FireFox are sent to remote servers, where they are likely to be accessed by the attackers for every wrong purpose.
Social Engineering to Lure Targets
SpriteCoin is the one-of-the-first kind of malware attacks which is delivered in the form of a cryptocurrency wallet. The traditional ransomware techniques, on the other hand, rely on phishing websites and emails. But the underlying technique of every ransomware remains the same: social engineering.
It is to be noted that every ransomware out there pretends to offer something ridiculously attractive in return for some confidential information/file download. These messages may contain a compelling story and context – a cliffhanger – to make you either click on the attached links or files. It is always recommended to follow a think-first-act-later policy.
Bitcoin Losing Steam in Ransomware Department
The SpriteCoin ransomware also proves reports indicating the hackers’ depreciating interest in demanding payments labeled in Bitcoin. Just recently, a California-based enterprise cybersecurity firm noted a steep 73% decline in the Bitcoin ransomware demands. Synchronically, it was assumed that hackers will choose a local fiat or an alternative cryptocurrency over the Nakamoto’s brainchild.
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