Imitations of Popular Bitcoin Services Trying to Lure Cryptocurrency Owners

Published at: Aug. 18, 2014

Popular Bitcoin websites such as CryptoCoinsNews and BlockChain, have been used as baits in a wave of phishing attempts against Bitcoin owners.

With Bitcoin gaining in popularity, financial-related crimes have boomed during the past year. Scammers have been operating through different strategies and tactics, but the impersonation of a company or service, is definitely the most popular one.

On August 14, Bitcoin news website CryptoCoinsNews,com, reported being impersonated in a phishing attack by scammers operating on a similar domain name CryptoCoinZNews.com. CCN said the attacker, under the email address [email protected]/* */ (CCN's CEO operates with the email address [email protected]/* */), contacted one of their advertisers 99bitcoins.com to offer a new advertisement option, which cost one Bitcoin. Fortunately, Olif Beigel from 99bitcoins.com didn't fail for the phishing attempt and CCN said to be taking actions against the domain owners.

In July, a similar phishing attack attempted to trick potential advertisers by impersonating the popular Bitcoin news website CoinDesk. The alleged sender was CoinDesk's founder Shakil Khan under the email address [email protected]/* */, reported Beigel in a blog post. He also reported similar phishing attempts from an imitation of the forum BitcoinTalk.

In late March, phishers attempted to lure users of the prominent Bitcoin wallet service and block explorer BlockChain.info, with a Google advertisement containing the exact same description as the real one. The Google search result displayed in fact an imitated version of the real BlockChain.info website with the link pointing towards phishing site blockchaln.info.gwyndara.com. BlockChain.info warned users with a tweet:

Warning: when searching for us on Google, 1st result is a phishing link disguised as an ad for t.co/0DZyULb31t pic.twitter.com/b4xdpg3wX0

— Blockchain.info (@blockchain) March 25, 2014

Yesterday, an imgur user shared a screenshot of his mobile phone of a phishing email. Alleged BlockChain.info sent the email from address [email protected]/* */, warning the individual that someone attempted to login to the user's My Wallet account (BlockChain.info's Bitcoin wallet product), suggesting this person to log into his/her by clinking on the following link.

Techworm.net lately reported another scam scheme operating through alleged Bitcoin leaks from alleged crypto exchanger service bitcoin.lixter.com. The leak was posted in PasteBin and supposedly contained users emails and passwords. The paste was since deleted but the Google's cache remains. Acting on the greed of readers, the scam works when a user logs in with the alleged leaked credentials on bitcoin.lixter.com. Once logged in, the user is redirected to another website buybitcoin.pixub.com where he/she is being asked his/her personal ID and password to which the bitcoins need to be transferred.

Real-time database regulator Clean MX has marked bitcoin.lixter.com as phishing pages, adding that the domain name was also being used for PayPal, MasterCard and Interbank phishing attacks.

Fortunately, Cointelegraph has not been a victim of any phishing attempts and we encourage our readers in being very careful before clicking on any link or sharing any personal information that could be use against their will. 

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Bitcoin
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