Cybercriminals worldwide target blockchain businesses with a variety of attacks including phishing, making a fool of them every single day. Scammers and phishers are a great threat to blockchain businesses. Here’s what you need to know!
Blockchains boast of being secure and transparent, by means of a public, decentralized record of transactions. However, the extent of security depends on how secure the applications built upon the platform are, and it turns out not very. Developers working on blockchains often tend to overlook the risks and vulnerabilities that applications themselves might have. It leads to a large number of attacks on businesses seen across the world. Especially with the weakest links being people, phishing attacks have grown acutely both in number and sophistication. It leads to building mistrust in the entire industry.
This April Fool’s Day, let’s throw light on such phishing scams that succeeded in defrauding blockchain businesses and users. As for victims of phishing attacks, every day is Fool’s Day!
1. Misguiding Web-links
A fake web link with a very minor difference from the original is created. It manipulates users into uploading personal or financial information believing it to be a genuine site. A good example of this is the phishing attack on the tZero website. Here, scammers created an exact replica of the original website with a web link Țzero.com instead of tzero.com. They replaced the T with a T-comma (Ț). Tzero, a blockchain business, deals with large-scale financial processes and investment management. It thus faced the risk of losing money, business, and reputation.
2. Misleading Adverts
In another type of phishing, scammers launch Google ads that seem extremely genuine, linking to a bogus website – that users upload information to. This happened recently in the case of the Sirin Labs, a State-of-the-art blockchain smartphone with P2P resource sharing. A Google advert was launched leading to the website – Sirin-labs.com, whereas the original website link is Sirinlabs.com. The fake website took the personal information of the users directed to it.
3. Fake sites with https://
Several users assume that a website with an https:// is a secure site. However, phishers went an extra mile in creativity, acquiring an https:// certificate for a fake site, tricking users into believing that it was the actual thing. In the case of envion.org, this is exactly what happened. In addition to creating an entirely similar website in the address of énvion.org, the scammers also got the site an https:// certificate, making it seem all the more genuine.
4. Phishing or Ransomware?
Ransomware attacks are a great threat to blockchain businesses both in terms of functioning and reputation. However, the fear of being held to ransom itself turns several business leaders into innocent victims. Phishers or attackers take advantage of the fact and demand ransoms by directly posting on social media. The messages are very well drafted. Business owners don’t mind paying them to take care of the threats and their business reputation.
A culture of security for your blockchain business
Wherever your customers interact online, there is a risk that attackers will manipulate your brand to steal their data for bad intent. While protecting your network is a finite task, the internet gets larger every day, so your external perimeter is an infinite blind spot. Phishing only works when individuals take the attacker’s bait and scammers are getting creative by the hour.
People, being the weakest link, pose a great threat to blockchain businesses. However, with the right education and cyber awareness, they could become your strongest line of defense against malicious parties. In a budding industry such as the blockchain, this could directly impact the level of faith the market has in your product and in the platform itself. Imparting knowledge is the only way to equip your teams with everything they need to stay secure and protect your company’s information and assets from phishing attacks.
Entersoft works in a strategic partnership with Segasec to provide a strong resolution for both inside and outside of the network-perimeter phishing attacks, in one consolidated solution. Segasec uses Machine Learning and AI to find domain manipulation or content duplication at the earliest stage of the game. They watch potential threats evolve using quadrillions of scans 24/7, and with the support of a web agent that cannot be traced are able to alert immediately in case of a breach.
This April Fool’s Day, join us in putting a stop to being fooled by scammers. Empower yourself and your employees with information on how to identify and evade phishing attacks. Adopt a culture of security at your blockchain business today!
PS: All examples in the article are real, dated 2018.