Cryptocurrency phishing up 170% in PH in 2022

MANILA  -Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky warned against increasing phishing activities involving cryptocurrency, a digital asset that is seeing greater adoption among Filipinos on the lookout for alternative forms of investments.

In a report, the Russian company said cryptocurrency-related scams surged by a staggering 170 percent in the Philippines last year.

Meanwhile, it detected 64,080 crypto phishing in the Southeast Asia region. Across the globe, such cyberthreats grew by 40 percent to 5.04 million last year from about 3.6 million in 2021.

“Despite some troubles that have occurred in the cryptocurrency market over the past six months, in the minds of many people, crypto still remains a symbol of getting rich quick with minimal effort,” Kaspersky security expert Olga Svistunova said.

Cyberhackers exploit this by baiting unsuspecting victims through phishing emails, which trick the users into giving their personal information.

“[The] flow of scammers who parasitize on this topic does not dry out. In order to lure victims into their networks, these scammers continue to come up with new and more interesting stories,” Svistunova said.

Kaspersky noted the usual culprits were giveaway scams and fake wallet phishing pages. It also recently detected an attack where users receive via email a PDF (portable document format) file “stating that they allegedly registered on a cryptocurrency cloud mining platform a long time ago and need to urgently withdraw a lot of crypts since their account is inactive.”

“The file contains a link to a fake mining platform. To withdraw the crypt, the user must fill out a form with personal information, including the card or account number, and pay a commission, in this case, through a crypto wallet or directly to the specified wallet address,” it explained.

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