This fake crypto exchange swindled millions of its victims

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A new round of email fraud campaigns have circulated online in an attempt to tempt potential victims with the promise of a massive amount of cryptocurrency.

This new advance fee fraud system discovered by researchers at Proofpoint sends out low-volume email campaigns and uses advanced social engineering to defraud Bitcoin victims.

The program itself provides unsuspecting users with credentials to a purported Bitcoin investment platform, then lures victims by promising them that they can withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency from an account. already established on the platform.

While similar to other traditional early fee fraud systems, these new campaigns are much more technically sophisticated and fully automated. They also require substantial interaction with the victim, as a victim would first have to log into the platform and create their own account on it to even start trying to withdraw any cryptocurrency.

In a new blog post, Proofpoint highlights that the use of cryptocurrency is remarkable because it provides anonymity for both attacker and victim. Potential victims may be drawn to how the money would be acquired anonymously and not taxable since it is in Bitcoin.

Your Bitcoin details

Proofpoint researchers detected the first of these campaigns in May using a coin45[.]com landing page while the most recent version started operations in July and directs potential victims to securecoins[.]report.

According to the cybersecurity company, each of the email campaigns has been sent to tens to hundreds of recipients around the world. However, emails from the same campaign contain the same credentials for all recipients and it looks like multiple people can log in with the same user ID and password if they log in from one. different IP address and browser. Once a potential victim changes the password and adds a phone number, the account becomes unique and victims will not see any traces of the activities of other victims.

Users who create an account for the fake cryptocurrency platform will see that there is 28.85 BTC in their bitcoin wallet. To remove this money from their wallet, victims must first transfer 0.0001 BTC to make sure everything is working as expected. After successfully doing this, the victims find out that the minimum withdrawal amount is 29.029 BTC and they have to add funds in order to be able to withdraw the full amount. However, even if they add the necessary funds, they will not be able to withdraw all of their Bitcoins from their account on the platform.

As is the case with other email fraud campaigns, users should be wary of emails from unknown senders promising them a monetary incentive. While Proofpoint has identified and shed light on several of these campaigns, firm researchers believe responsible cybercriminals will continue to evolve their tactics in future campaigns.

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