Due to increased focus on the first cryptocurrency by government regulators and Bitcoin’s growing technological protection, cybercriminals will abandon BTC as a crypto scam target in 2023.
Cyber security company Kaspersky predicts that fraudsters will rely less on BTC payments for ransomware scams in 2023.
The main reason for fraudsters to reject Bitcoin is the increased interest of regulators in the cryptocurrency market in general, and BTC in particular. Also, analysts emphasize that improving technical methods of protecting BTC significantly reduces the interest of cybercriminals to the first cryptocurrency.
According to Kaspersky’s report, the Web 3.0 sector will remain the primary target of cybercriminals in 2023. Scammers will continue to conduct fake ICOs and mint fake NFTs, as well as exploit vulnerabilities in smart contracts. However, analysts believe the most common methods of cryptocurrency scams in the next year will be the use of:
- ransomware and other malware;
- testing frameworks to simulate Red Teaming.
Recall that hackers managed to steal over $3 billion in crypto this year, twice as much as the entire 2021.
In its forecast for next year, Kaspersky analysts also looked at current cybercrime trends. The most popular methods of crypto scams in 2022 were:
- exploitation of stolen personal data;
- phishing, including social media hacking;
- ransomware, spyware, and other malware.
The general decline in the crypto market this year lowered profitability of crypto scammers, and the most popular fraud scheme became social media scams.
