USA, Russia & China Are The Main Targets For Crypto-Hackers

The US, Russia and China top the list of countries where users of crypto-exchange exchanges suffered from cyber-attacks. According to Group-IB, a company investigating and preventing cybercrime, their research is based on historical data on cyber-attacks at the 19 largest crypto-exchange markets from 2016 to 2017.

Thus, in January 2018, a great number of incidents was recorded, which grew by 700% compared to the average monthly indicator of 2017.

Group-IB experts discovered 50 botnets used by cyber-criminals for attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges. The prevailing share of harmful infrastructure is expanded in the US (56.1%) and the Netherlands (21.5%) and accordingly over 4.3% and 3.2% of hacking tools is located in Ukraine and Russia.

Experts consider that in most instances, users of cryptocurrency exchanges take responsibility for the attacks, as they ignore the security rules and special steps which they must use to protect their personal cabinets. The researchers studied the cases of hacking of 720 accounts and discovered that the vast majority of users neglected the requirement of two-stage authentication, while every fifth user had a password with a length of less than eight characters.

Analyzing the security measures of 19 exchanges, Group-IB came to the conclusion that none of them guarantees 100% confidentiality of personal information of its customers.