2018-8-8 00:57 |
Cryptocurrency crimes (i.e. money laundering, hacking, terrorist financing, etc.) have become a growing concern for the market, leaving many consumers and investors concerned about its future. As an effort to see whether such activities have a common trend on a geographical basis, software firm devoted to preventing and investigating online crime, Group-IB recently conducted a study. The end result: The U.S accounts for approximately 56.1 percent of cybercrimes.
The first chart provided is that of a pie chart dubbed, “Cybercriminals’ C&C-servers Distribution by Country”. While the U.S takes a large portion of the pie, it is followed by Netherlands (21.5%), Other (11%), Ukraine (4.3%), Russia (3.2%), France (2.6%) and Germany (1.3%).
The study further revealed that the top 19 crypto exchanges known to date were unsuccessful in preventing such crypto crimes from occurring. Another pie chart, which now looked at the “Affected Cryptoexchanges User Distribution by Country”, also showed U.S to having made the top of the list for the leakage of user accounts, followed by Russia and China. Bitcoinist pointed out that 720 accounts were compromised in 2018, which has increased by nearly 95 percent since 2017.
The Director of Special Projects at Group-IB, Ruslan Yusufov also shared his take on the results and what could have caused for such crypto crimes to begin with. In particular, Yusufov said:
“Increased fraudulent activity and attention of hacker groups to the crypto-industry, additional functions of malicious software related to cryptocurrencies, as well as the significant amounts of already stolen fund signals that the industry is not ready to defend itself and protect its users.”
Another point that was depicted through a line graph is that of the strength of a password used by crypto investors. It appears that nearly 20 percent of the compromised accounts (about 144) had passwords shorter than 8 characters. Similarly, many investors opted out from the 2FA authentication system, which could also have made it easier for hackers to dive right in.
Clearly, U.S seems to be the most problematic country and it comes of no surprise as to why many are urging for some type of fair regulation. It looks like the time has also come to ensure that the strength of a password and any additional security measures must be taken to prevent such breaches from occurring.
Do you think the crypto sphere is not “ready” to support investors and to prevent their accounts from getting leaked?
Similar to Notcoin - Blum - Airdrops In 2024