Crypto drainers in an “as a service” model burst onto the scene in 2022, but 2023 was the year that they ascended to “major threat” status. Inferno malware is thus far the most successful example in terms of victim count (about 130,000) and stolen assets (about $87 million worth).
Hackers broke into the SEC’s X account to issue a fake announcement that Bitcoin ETF has been approved, luring major crypto exchanges (and even major news outlets) into signal-boosting the fake news.
Report on crypto laundering finds the total amount being washed via cross-chain transactions has made another massive jump of nearly $3 billion over the last year, now at $7 billion. North Korea’s Lazarus hacking group is the biggest single driver with nearly a billion dollars of movement of stolen crypto to its name during this time.
Attackers were able to hijack a video upload feature on the bitcoin ATMs to upload malicious JavaScript. At least 15 operators were compromised and $1.5 Million in crypto was confirmed stolen for now.
In total, the FBI says that $42 milion has been stolen by fake crypto apps since 2021. The more complicated of these apps almost always use a social engineering element.
A group of Chinese hackers has been observed distributing backdoored versions of legitimate Web3 wallets via cloned websites. The scammers are targeting web browser searches for particular types of wallets.