Bitcoin Phishing Scam Hits Over 400 Businesses, Says Proofpoint

Proofpoint, the e-mail security company situated in California has just exposed one Bitcoin phishing scam that of late targeted over 400 organizations while attempting at deceiving end-users into giving away personal passwords of their Bitcoin purse.

A minimum of 12,000 phishing e-mails were dispatched within dual outbreaks to the organizations belonging to various industries comprising media, finance, higher education, manufacturing and technology, among others.

Posing as communication from Bitcoin's highest level transaction database Blockchain.info, the e-mails utilize one typical template of "account warning."

Telling that a hacker got lately identified attempting at accessing the user's A/C from China, the e-mails, according to Proofpoint, try to sound urgent by taking advantage of well-known fears related to hack incidences from China. The messages further utilize one unique-appearing "case ID" so they'd sound more authentic.

The phishing electronic mail also includes the date when an attempt was made to infiltrate the wallet, the location along with IP address of the infiltration source.

Thereafter, one web-link labeled as "reset password" is provided for end-users to follow as well as make their passwords afresh on the spoofed Blockchain.info site that simply grabs all info which the victims submit.

Actually, whilst resetting the wallet password, one general login error alert greets the victim as his A/C info heads for the scammers.

It maybe noted that Blockchain is a wallet service used most widely for Bitcoins. Blockchain.com boasts having about 2m consumers that increased from 400,000 during September 2013, while experiences 60,000-or-more transactions daily.

The phishing e-mail scam had 2.7% recipients open the e-mails. Moreover, given that merely 1% of people worldwide utilized the crypto-currency, it's likely that the figure will escalate in future thus giving opportunity to scams similar as these for ensnaring more victims.

Specifically, according to Vice-President Kevin Epstein of the Department of Advanced Security and Governance at Proofpoint, as Bitcoin became more and more popular, assaults understandably would rise, as also get more refined. The latest outbreak was targeting numerous business as well as non-business users. Even people without Bitcoin accounts were viewing the messages despite no reason for doing so, stated Epstein. Threatpost.com published this, August 20, 2014.

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