According to online sources, in 2019, the number of thefts and fraudulent campaigns in the cryptocurrency environment has significantly increased. Losses in digital currencies for the first nine months of 2019 are about $4,4 billion, which is 150% more than what was stolen in the whole of 2018.
βThe increase in cases of cryptocurrency theft and fraud in this area clearly demonstrates that criminals are successfully coping with the development of a new field of activity,β said Dave Jevans, CEO of cryptocurrency company CipherTrace.
He also said that two major incidents contributed to the rise in digital currency losses this year. One of the cases is related to a campaign in which the attackers used a pyramid scheme and the PlusToken exchange service. Then the clients of the service lost cryptocurrency for a total of $2,9 billion. The second case is related to the bankruptcy of the QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange. This step became forced after the CEO of the exchange, the only person who knew the password from the offline wallet of the service, died.
CipherTrace notes that even without taking into account the largest thefts and frauds in the field of digital currencies, there are a lot of incidents in which millions of dollars appear. Cryptocurrency services and police officers often focus on more serious threats to business, not paying due attention to crimes in which attackers manage to take over amounts of up to $5 million. for a total of $2019 million. This figure is the lowest in the last two years.
Source: 3dnews.ru