Sometimes hackers are clever and cunning enough to find ways to break rules without getting caught. It only took a simple mistake for Google to unknowingly participate in a huge scam. What scam? You are about to find out.
Criminals purchased Google AdWords and promoted a fake version of Blockchain.info
Blockchain.ingo is a legitimate service, offering users to open their own individual Bitcoin wallets. Crooks’ criminal minds came up with a brilliant and possibly very profitable idea: create a fake version and trick users into revealing their credentials to them.
The only question was “how to get people to visit their rogue version?” The answer was surprisingly simple. Hackers bought space on the Google AdWords and were able to legitimately promote their creation: Blokchien.info website. To be fair, the name clearly differs from the official version, but some inattentive Bitcoin owners might have been missed this huge aspect.
Long story short, a cyber-criminal gang dubbed “Coinhoarder” managed to pass with flying colors, and their deception made them more than $50 million. The Ukraine-based group continued with their scam for over three years. This means that it was active before cryptocurrencies became a huge magnet for wannabe millionaires.
However, it did receive some of the glory of this global obsession. In the last four months of 2017, the group managed to steal more than $10. With such accomplishments, who needs a job or a career? Now, as the scam has been revealed to the world, cyber criminals might just have to pay for their long-lasting deception.
Hackers still unknown, but their sites have been shut down
Security analysts co-operated with Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and managed t otrack dwn the Bitcoin wallet which received all of the profits from this scam. As it appears, the hackers were very interested in tricking people from African countries which is a surprising decision. Nonetheless, the brains of this operation remain to be unknown. Ukrainian authorities have been shutting down the rogue versions of legitimate websites, but this does not mean that the Coinhoarders are permanently stopped.
Until more information is announced, the gang of cyber criminals is still circulating somewhere and attempting to come up with new ways to make money. Of course, there are millions of such groups of hackers that have the same goal. Therefore, it is never known when and which gang is going to be exposed to the public. Since the Coinhoarders’ scam managed to last more than three years, it is fairly possible that more similar scams are currently threatening your wallet and your cyber security in general.
Source: tripwire.com.
