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Bitcoin

LockBit Ransomware Hacker Ordered to Pay $860,000 After Guilty Plea in Canada

A 34-year-old Russian-Canadian national has been sentenced to nearly four years in jail in Canada for his participation in the LockBit global ransomware operation. Mikhail Vasiliev, an Ontario resident, was originally arrested in November 2022 and charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) with “conspiring with others to intentionally damage protected computers and to […]

LockBit Ransomware’s Darknet Domains Seized in Global Law Enforcement Raid

Update: The U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) has confirmed the takedown of LockBit infrastructure. Read here for more details. An international law enforcement operation has led to the seizure of multiple darknet domains operated by LockBit, one of the most prolific ransomware groups, marking the latest in a long list of digital takedowns. While the […]

CACTUS Ransomware Exploits Qlik Sense Vulnerabilities in Targeted Attacks

A CACTUS ransomware campaign has been observed exploiting recently disclosed security flaws in a cloud analytics and business intelligence platform called Qlik Sense to obtain a foothold into targeted environments. “This campaign marks the first documented instance […] where threat actors deploying CACTUS ransomware have exploited vulnerabilities in Qlik Sense for initial access,” Arctic Wolf […]

Google Wins Lawsuit Against Russians Linked to Blockchain-based Glupteba Botnet

Google has won a lawsuit filed against two Russian nationals in connection with the operation of a botnet called Glupteba, the company said last week. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York imposed monetary sanctions against the defendants and their U.S.-based legal counsel. The defendants have also been asked to pay […]

Experts Uncover Details on Maui Ransomware Attack by North Korean Hackers

The first ever incident possibly involving the ransomware family known as Maui occurred on April 15, 2021, aimed at an unnamed Japanese housing company. The disclosure from Kaspersky arrives a month after U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies issued an advisory about the use of the ransomware strain by North Korean government-backed hackers to target the […]

New Orchard Botnet Uses Bitcoin Founder’s Account Info to Generate Malicious Domains

A new botnet named Orchard has been observed using Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s account transaction information to generate domain names to conceal its command-and-control (C2) infrastructure. “Because of the uncertainty of Bitcoin transactions, this technique is more unpredictable than using the common time-generated [domain generation algorithms], and thus more difficult to defend against,” researchers from […]

FBI Seizes $500,000 Ransomware Payments and Crypto from North Korean Hackers

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced the seizure of $500,000 worth of Bitcoin from North Korean hackers who extorted digital payments from several organizations by using a new ransomware strain known as Maui. “The seized funds include ransoms paid by healthcare providers in Kansas and Colorado,” the DoJ said in a press release […]

Scammers Netted $7.7 Billion worth of Cryptocurrency in 2021

A new report confirms that cryptocurrency-based crimes posed “one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrency’s continued adoption.” Blockchain analysis firm Chainanalysis has revealed startling details about the devastation cybercriminals managed to cause during 2021. According to a preview of its “2022 Crypto Crime Report” due to be released in February 2022, cryptocurrency-oriented scammers and cyber […]

BitMart Exchange hacked as hackers steal $150 million

BitMart Exchange has confirmed that the security breach involves one of its ETH hot wallets and one of BSC hot wallets. BitMart Exchange, a cryptocurrency trading platform has suffered a “large-scale” security breach in which hackers have stolen funds worth $150 million, the company said today on Twitter. With this breach, BitMart has added its […]

Indian PM Modi’s Twitter Account HACKED for Bitcoin scam

This was the second time that a Twitter account linked to PM Modi got compromised for a Bitcoin-related scam. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official Twitter handle (@narendramodi) got briefly hacked by a yet unidentified hacker. The hacking occurred early Sunday morning. This is the second hack attack on an account connected to the Indian […]

Google Disrupts Blockchain-based Glupteba Botnet; Sues Russian Hackers

Google on Tuesday said it took steps to disrupt the operations of a sophisticated “multi-component” botnet called Glupteba that approximately infected more than one million Windows computers across the globe and stored its command-and-control server addresses on Bitcoin’s blockchain as a resilience mechanism. As part of the efforts, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said it […]

Warning: Yet Another Bitcoin Mining Malware Targeting QNAP NAS Devices

Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker QNAP on Tuesday released a new advisory warning of a cryptocurrency mining malware targeting its devices, urging customers to take preventive steps with immediate effect. “A bitcoin miner has been reported to target QNAP NAS. Once a NAS is infected, CPU usage becomes unusually high where a process named ‘[oom_reaper]’ […]

US offers $10m reward for decisive info on DarkSide ransomware gang

The U.S. Department of State is paying an additional $5 million to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest or conviction of any individual in any country “conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in a DarkSide variant ransomware incident.” The U.S. Department of State is offering a whopping $10 million reward […]

Twitter hacker charged in sim swapping, cryptocurrency scheme

The 22-year-old British national Joseph James O’Connor, aka PlugwalkJoe, was one of the hackers behind 2020’s massive Twitter hack – PlugwalkJoe also stole Ethereum, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin from victims using SIM Swapping attack. On Wednesday, a British citizen identified as Joseph James O’Connor, aka PlugwalkJoe, was charged in the US for his involvement in […]

US Sanctions Cryptocurrency Exchange SUEX for Aiding Ransomware Gangs

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Russian cryptocurrency exchange Suex for helping facilitate and launder transactions from at least eight ransomware variants as part of the government’s efforts to crack down on a surge in ransomware incidents and make it difficult for bad actors to profit from such attacks using digital currencies. […]

Defi protocol THORChain loses $8 million in “seemingly whitehat” attack

THORChain tweeted that “The hacker deliberately limited their impact, seemingly a whitehat.” There is a second data breach in THORChain’s security system. For your information, THORChain is a cross-chain DeFi protocol that was hacked last week for the first time and suffered a loss of $8.3 million. Now it has been hacked again, and this […]

Malware hits Hive OS cryptomining users; steals funds from wallets

The malware is capable of replacing the victim’s wallet address with one provided by its author(s). With cryptocurrencies becoming popular in the last couple of years, more and more people have turned to cryptomining hoping to benefit from the boom. In fact, this even led to the price of gaming GPUs rising. On the other […]

Hackers Steal Over $600 Million Worth of Cryptocurrencies from Poly Network

Hackers have siphoned $611 million worth of cryptocurrencies from a blockchain-based financial network in what’s believed to be one of the largest heists targeting the digital asset industry, putting it ahead of breaches targeting exchanges Coincheck and Mt. Gox in recent years. Poly Network, a China-based cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for swapping tokens across […]

U.S. Recovers $2.3 Million Ransom Paid to Colonial Pipeline Hackers

In a major blow, the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said it has recovered 63.7 bitcoins (currently valued at $2.3 million) paid by Colonial Pipeline to the DarkSide ransomware extortionists on May 8, pursuant to a seizure warrant that was authorized by the Northern District of California. The ransomware attack also hobbled the pipeline […]