Phishing attacks against cryptocurrency holders have risen in Russia

In September, the number of attempts by Russian users to navigate to cryptocurrency-related phishing pages rose by almost 50% compared with August—from 211,000 to 317,000. This was reported by Kommersant, citing data from Kaspersky Lab.

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Overall in the third quarter, the company’s solutions prevented 633,000 such incidents. By comparison, in the second quarter this figure stood at around 379,000 incidents.

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Other experts also point to a rise in crypto fraud. According to data from the cybersecurity platform Immunefi, the total number of cyberattacks in the third quarter increased by 153% compared with the same period last year.

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According to estimates by experts polled by the publication, annually about 10–15% of users who first buy crypto assets become victims of fraudsters. For 2022–2023, the amount of funds lost by Russian citizens alone amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars, they added.

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The uptick is linked to seasonal factors in market capitalization growth, and to Binance’s exit from Russia.

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In September, Aleksei Pomerko became a victim of a conman when attempting to buy cryptocurrency.

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Earlier, Russian actor Artem Tkachenko lost about $260,000 on fraudulent Bitcoin investments, trusting the advice of Pavel Derevyanko, who also suffered losses in cryptocurrencies.