Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, reveals that arrested six criminals (five men and one woman), who orchestrated a $27 mln Bitcoin scam, have been simultaneously arrested in Britain and the Netherlands.
The bad actors would steal money from their victims with the help of "typosquatting."
What is typosquatting?
Typosquatting allows stealing personal information by using misspelled domains. It takes one minor deviation (one missing letter or symbol) to be redirected to the wrong website without even suspecting anything.
The Naked Science study has identified a lot of typosquatting subcultures that are driven by different motives – from “domain parking” to satire.
A fake crypto exchange
In this particular case, URL hijacking took a more malicious turn since the recently arrested individuals actually made a copy of a popular cryptocurrency exchange whose name hasn’t been disclosed.
Gullible users would hand all the relevant information to the hackers on a silver plate, thus letting them easily pilfer the funds from their crypto wallets.
The rampant problem
The above-mentioned report states that more than 4,000 cryptocurrency holders from 12 countries were affected by the scam with around €24 mln ($27 mln) being stolen from their accounts.
That, of course, pales in comparison to a total of $1.2 bln that crypto criminals have already bagged this year.
