Phishing scams have tricked everyone from reporters at the Associated Press to Washington insiders, and what crook worth her stolen credentials would give up on such a successful strategy? So phishers are once again repurposing a classic con: Tell people they've won or been given a lot of money and that they just have to do XYZ—this is the identity- and/or money-stealing part—to claim what's owed to them. In this iteration, the phishers are dangling bitcoins as the lure.
Slate's news editor, Chad Lorenz, received the above email yesterday around 1 p.m. He quickly realized that something was wrong, even though the email looks pretty good: It's not trying too hard, it uses the Coinbase logo (Coinbase is a popular bitcoin wallet service), and it even has a copyright sign. But Lorenz wasn't expecting any money, and certainly not any cryptocurrency. Plus, assuming it was his lucky day, whose "external bitcoin account" was the bounty coming from? (Turns out that several other Slate staffers received the email as well.)
John OBrien, a spokesperson for Coinbase, wrote in an email that the phishing message had a few warning signs: "[t]here are a few red flags. ‘Hi,’ (not addressed to anyone) and ‘from an external account’ (not from anyone). Additionally the link will not take you to Coinbase.com."
Phishing scams promising bitcoins seem to have been percolating in January, and Coinbase published a blog post on the topic last month, noting that it had upped its security and encouraging "all customers to exercise caution when clicking links to financial institutions or payment services online."
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