Three Ways Hackers Steal Crypto and How to Track Stolen Funds

According to Cointelegraph, blockchain investigator Bitrace has identified three effective ways hackers gain access to crypto investors’ wallets: search engines, pasteboard hijacking, and liquidity mining and coin theft. Attackers use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to rank higher on internet searches, coercing users to download and sign up to fake apps with backdoors. Pasteboard hijacking involves automatically grabbing or modifying previously copied text data from clipboards, often skimming seed phrases of users, which can be used later to access wallets and drain funds. Bitrace highlighted how a fake Telegram app was being used to replace the destination wallet address copied in the clipboard, causing users to send their tokens to the hacker. Finally, the classic “high yield and low risk” liquidity scams also ranked as one of the three most popular scams resulting in the disappearance of tokens.Bitrace recommended three methods crypto users could use to trace the stolen funds, starting with tracing back the transaction fees. Investigators often find the hacker’s address by tracking down the source of the transaction fees that were paid to move the stolen funds. Other ways investors can improve their chances of retrieving stolen funds include using blockchain explorers and professional tools. To know more about how to track stolen crypto, read Cointelegraph Research’s article on how blockchain analysis helps recover funds.In addition to targeting investors, attackers often steal funds from crypto organizations as well. As part of the remediation of a recent exploit, Maestrobots, a group of cryptocurrency bots on the Telegram messenger app, paid a total of 610 ETH in its own revenue to cover all the user losses, worth more than $1 million. Blockchain security firm CertiK confirmed to Cointelegraph that it has been able to detect the transactions showing the 334 ETH compensation paid out to users from Maestro. “Most of these tokens pumped back up due to the anticipation that we were gonna market buy the tokens. Most of these tokens are still alive and kicking,” a spokesperson for Maestrobots told Cointelegraph.