Crypto mining malware has been sneakily invading hundreds of thousands of computers around the world since 2019, often masquerading as legitimate programs, such as Google Translate, new research has found. In an Aug. 29 report by Check Point Research (CPR), a research team for American-Israeli cybersecurity provider, Check Point Software Technologies, the malware has been flying under the radar for years, thanks partly to its insidious design which delays instaling the crypto mining malware for weeks after the initial software download. .@_CPResearch_ detected a #crypto miner #malware campaign, which potentially infected thousands of machines worldwide. Dubbed ‘Nitrokod,” the attack was …

Christopher Hamilton, a British national allegedly connected to ‘Cryptoqueen’ Ruja Ignatova’s cryptocurrency scheme OneCoin, reportedly faces extradition to the United States on charges related to a scam going back to 2014. According to a Tuesday report from legal news outlet Law360, a judge in the United Kingdom will allow the process to move forward for Hamilton to be extradited to the U.S. on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. Hamilton was allegedly involved in laundering $105 million through the crypto Ponzi scheme OneCoin, which defrauded more than 3 million investors of more than $4 billion through the sale of …

Binance Australia is tightening up its onboarding process for new users as part of a push to protect users it's flagged as most vulnerable to financial crypto crime. The new measures were mentioned in Binance Australia’s June quarter Economic, Social, and Governance (ESG) report on Aug. 29, which noted that the exchange was working on a “stringent and user-focused onboarding experience” aimed at groups with a higher occurrence of financial crime. Speaking with Cointelegraph, Binance Aus CEO Leigh Travers and Zachary Lu from the exchange’s Financial Crime, Risk and Compliance unit, noted the company has been actively working on ways …

Cryptocurrency risk management firm Elliptic has released a report suggesting that scammers stole more than $100 million worth of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, starting in 2021. In its NFTs and Financial Crime report released on Wednesday, Elliptic said crypto users had been the victims of roughly $100.6 million worth of scams related to NFTs in the 13-month period from July 2021 to July 2022. The firm reported that although the market downturn had caused the value of NFTs to “slump”, scammers stole the most tokens in July 2022 — estimated to be 4,647 assets — and the most value in …

Two prominent YouTube content creators are set to lock horns in a legal battle over a cryptocurrency video allegedly promoting a project that ended up being a scam. Bitboy Crypto, a YouTube channel founded by Ben Armstrong, produces a variety of content focused on cryptocurrency news, projects and tokens and trading advice. The channel has been active since February 2018 and has over 1.4 million subscribers. The channel is known for its news pieces and trading-focused videos with headlines like ‘Top 3 Coins To Outperform Ethereum! (Strong Short Term Play)’ typifying the type of content disseminated to viewers. While these …

A new report from Juniper Research analyzed the trajectory of the nonfungible token (NFT) market over the next five years. According to the study, global transactions related to NFTs will escalate from 24 million in 2022 to nearly 40 million by 2027. One of the top catalysts to push NFT adoption will be those linked to metaverse use cases, according to the study. This niche of NFTs will be the fastest growing in the next five years. Metaverse-related NFTs will experience an increase in transactions from 600,000 transactions in 2022 to 9.8 million by 2027. A good indicator for brands …

Cybersecurity analyst Serpent has revealed his picks for the most dastardly crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) scams currently active on Twitter. The analyst, who has 253,400 followers on Twitter, is the founder of artificial intelligence and community-powered crypto threat mitigation system, Sentinel. In a 19-part thread posted on Aug. 21, Serpent outlined how scammers target inexperienced crypto users through the use of copycat websites, URLs, accounts, hacked verified accounts, fake projects, fake airdrops, and plenty of malware. One of the more worrisome strategies comes amid a recent spate of crypto phishing scams and protocol hacks. Serpent explains that the “Crypto …

Manchester United Fan Token (MUFC) is a dead coin and not related to the sports franchise, but one Elon Musk tweet was enough to revive it on Aug. 17. Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 17, 2022 Fake Man U token pumps after Elon Musk's tweet To clarify, MUFC is not an official Manchester United crypto token. It came to life in August 2021 after a team of programmers, who said to be hardcore fans of the Manchester United, falsely claimed that holding MUFC would give them influence on the football club's decisions. The …

The saga of BitConnect, a major cryptocurrency scam scheme, is taking another twist as one of the BitConnect co-founders is now wanted by the Indian state police. Satish Kumbhani, an Indian national and the alleged founder of the crypto Ponzi scheme BitConnect, reportedly became subject to a new police investigation in India, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday. The Pune police, operating under the Indian state Maharashtra Police, launched a probe into Kumbhani after a Pune-based lawyer filed a complaint claiming that he lost about 220 Bitcoin (BTC), or $5.2 million, due to BitConnect. The complainant said his original investment …

According to a Sunday Twitter post by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, only about 50 out of 7,000 users claiming themselves to be employees of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange on Linkedin are real. The crypto executive lamented the lack of a real-ID authentication system on Linkedin, saying: "I wished LinkedIn had a feature to let the company verify people. So, many ‘hey, I am responsible for listing’ scammers on LinkedIn. Be careful." The LinkedIn crypto scam typically begins as an unsolicited request from an apparent crypto exchange executive to project stakeholders regarding a potential token listing. …

Using nonfungible tokens (NFTs) as carbon credits, or carbon offsets, reveals an outlet for Web3 technology to foster a more environmentally friendly future. NFTs as carbon credits are a slow-rolling trend in the refinance market and decentralized finance (DeFi). Most of this activity currently takes place on the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain, as it has already offset its entire carbon footprint. However, the way these digital assets work with carbon credits differs from other ventures in the space. Rather than a store of wealth or a piece of unique digital art, carbon credit NFTs serve as a repository of information related …

Aurora Labs' head of product, Matt Henderson says there is a sophisticated over-the-counter (OTC) transaction scam running about that almost duped him into losing a stash of his hard-earned cryptocurrency. Henderson detailed his personal run-in with a scam artist known as ‘Olai’ to his Twitter followers on Aug. 5. Olai's scam essentially involves tricking a victim into believing payment had been received for an OTC crypto transaction, when in fact it wasn’t. Today I nearly got caught by a fascinating and devious crypto scam during an OTC transaction. Read on to learn what happened, so you can avoid it happening …