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https://www.buzzsprout.com/762053/9534086Take a listen here! The accelerated demand for bitcoin has provided cybercriminals with a new playground. It’s untraceable, making it perfect for extortion and impersonation. In fact, reported by CBS News, Americans have lost more than $80 million in cryptocurrency investment scams since October, which represents a 1,000% increase from the fall of 2019, according to FTC data. This podcast explores this attack vector and the common methods and scams, including modern mining malware such as LemonDuck and LemonCat.

A (Not Really) Brief History of Bitcoin and Monero Note: this is the first installment in a 3-part post. Bitcoin turned 10 years old this year and it’s only getting more and more exposure. Having invented the revolutionary internet technology known as “Blockchain”, Bitcoin has only been gaining hype ever since the first genesis block was mined into existence. At first, it started out is just a joke of an idea and websites would give bitcoins away for free just for visiting. This was back when the currency itself was worth next to nothing. That all changed with the advent of Silk Road, an underground market on the encrypted dark web for buying and selling goods otherwise illegal or extremely difficult to purchase in most countries. The site’s buyers and sellers remained effectively anonymous to one another and were almost impossible to track. It’s usually criminals and hackers that test and prove the utility of new technologies before widespread adoption. Suddenly, people saw the real u

Note: this is the third installment in a 3-part post. If you haven’t already, read part 1 and part 2. 2018 was a brutal year for Bitcoin and subsequently all other altcoins utilizing blockchain technology. The start of 2018 had Bitcoin around $17,000; by the end of 2018 it had dropped to around $3,800. Not only was this devastating for investors, but cybercriminals also took a major financial hit (your heart weeps for them, I know.) What’s interesting is that we also saw major decline with cryptomining attacks as the price decreased, presumably because the attacks were no longer as profitable. In late February ($3700), Coinhive abruptly announced the impending end to its service. The stated reason: it was no longer economically viable to run. To be honest, I did not see this coming, but I do understand. It’s reasonable to think that Coinhive didn’t intend for their creation to be abused by criminals, but they have still kept 30% of ALL the earnings generated by their script—which was o

The Rise of Mining Attacks Note: this is the second installment in a 3-part post. Read part 1 here. Monero—a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, but without a public ledger—is basically at the center of all of today’s cryptomining threats. In fact it’s been estimated that over 85% of all illicit mining is on the Monero blockchain. Most of these attacks utilize an open source miner called XMRig and will use exploits to gain credentials and spread laterally throughout the network. They do this using the Shadow Broker exploits you probably already heard of during the famous WannaCry ransomware outbreak in 2017. The core idea is very simple: infect a victim with a legitimate, benign miner executable. Run the miner without the victim’s knowledge for as long as possible and monitor its hash rate using a portal that legitimate miners use, because they have no idea that you’re doing this illegally. It’s pretty sneaky. This isn’t money out of thin air. Users are still on the hook for CPU usage, which