As prices of cryptocurrencies rise, exchanges are facing increased attacks from cyber crooks and hackers looking to get inside their systems. Criminals are using clever tactics like impersonating or spoofing social media profiles in order to deceive investors and sneak into their cryptocurrency wallets.
Not just cryptocurrency investors, cybercriminals are also increasingly attacking cryptocurrency exchanges. Such attacks have doubled in recent months with digital coins touching all-time high levels.
Exchanges are now rushing to fix vulnerabilities in their systems in the face of oncoming regulation which might hold them responsible for investors getting duped. Crypto exchanges are placing robust frameworks, systems and protocols to insulate themselves from such rising threats.
According to an Economic Times report, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in India Zebpay faces at least two sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks wherein crooks try to overwhelm the exchange’s systems to disrupt service or search for vulnerabilities. However, more sophisticated of the lot are security threats emanating from fraud from a combination of social engineering and computer intrusion.
Sam Noble, chief technology officer, at ZebPay told ET that such frequency of such attacks are increasing.
“ZebPay is constantly under attack. Whether it’s from white-hat hackers trying to find issues they can submit to our bug-bounty programme or nefarious black-hat hackers trying to overload our systems to cause disruption and find holes in our defences. As cryptocurrency becomes more mainstream, the frequency of these attacks is increasing, meaning we must develop more sophisticated methods to quickly identify and neutralise them,” he said.
Some exchanges have even reached out to their lawyers on the way forward in case their customers are duped of their investments through such frauds.
The report added that all major exchanges have witnessed at least 2-3 major attacks in the previous months and many investors have lost their holdings in the process.
Recently a 26-year-old Karnataka man Take Srikrishna Ramesh was apprehended by the police for hacking into Indian exchanges and stealing bitcoins by “exploiting a bug”, as per reports.
