Cybersecurity advisory firm The Crypsis published a report highlighting the trend of crypto crime activity across the last few years.
The report titled the “2020 Incident Response and Data Breach Report,” showed that the amounts demanded by ransomware attackers have increased by 100 percent from 2018 to 2019.
Crypto crime on the rise
The firm revealed that despite the countermeasures taken to hinder criminal activity, the activity has only grown. The report revealed that the average sum demanded by ransomware attackers grew to over 115,000 dollars ($115,123) in 2019.
The report noted that the criminals have improved their tactics and have shifted their aim towards targeting enterprises. The attackers select victims that are capable of paying a large sum as ransom.
Wotoken crypto scam
The largest contribution to criminal activity was by a Chinese Ponzi scheme called Wotoken that swindled more than 700,000 people and netted more than 1.4 billion dollars in stolen funds.
COVID-19 scams
The pandemic outbreak only deteriorated the situation as many criminals fooled unsuspecting people through COVID-19 scams. Scammers sold fake COVID-19 test kits while hackers overwhelmed the servers of organizations fighting against the pandemic during peak times.
Ransomware variants
Some of the most notable ransomware attacks that occurred in 2019-2020 include the Ryuk ransomware, REvil, and Phobos. Using variants of ransomware strains makes it hard for people to protect their devices.
The Ryuk ransomware was one of the most popular ransomware that attacked a multitude of targets in 2020, including hospitals and maritime facilities of the US Coast Guard.
Cryptopolitan previously reported that crypto crime activity in 2020 had caused a loss of more than 1.4 billion US dollars due to exit scams and coronavirus-related scams.
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