For years, we have been sharing details about cyber attacks targeting cryptocurrency investors through COINTURK. In fact, last year we wrote that attacks would increase with personalized scenarios as the market was expected to rise in 2024-2025. And this concern has fully materialized. The latest incident offers many lessons for investors.
Cryptocurrency Security
Investors have become separate targets because their savings have become much more valuable. Through COINTURK, we have covered comprehensive evaluations on physical attacks, social engineering attacks, and many other topics. The most recent event shows us all how the target was completely taken down using social engineering methods.
A user known by the pseudonym 0xsmartcontract wrote about an incident today that should serve as a lesson for investors and warned;
“Thieves in crypto are extremely effective at social engineering, a fantastic social engineering theft;
Recently, a user asked for support from the project team on a Discord channel about a token, but the project team (actually not the real team) gave some instructions and asked the user to send them a screenshot.
What they did; they guided the user to change the language of the crypto wallet to Chinese and then extract their private key and ask for that screenshot, and unfortunately, the user did it, losing $30,000.”
Physical Assaults
Sharing too many details about the size of your crypto assets on social media or even in real life can get you into trouble. We have seen many incidents where cryptocurrency investors have been robbed in Turkey and around the world.
Moreover, antivirus software is useless against an armed assailant, and attackers are often successful. The fact that crypto can be quickly and unrestrictedly transferred abroad also makes these attackers salivate. In just the year 2024, there were 2 known major crypto robbery incidents.
- January 16: A restaurant owner was kidnapped, bathed in diesel, forced to drink alcohol, and had his finger cut off until he transferred $200,000 worth of cryptocurrency. This incident occurred in Romania.
- March 15: A six-person Russian gang robbed a Russian man and his wife in a cafe and stole BTC worth 1.8 million baht. This incident also happened in Thailand.
In 2023, we saw 17 similar incidents reflected in the media. These types of crypto robberies occurred in many countries, including Spain, Thailand, Montenegro, India, and the United Arab Emirates.
