Hackers stole more than twice as much cryptocurrency in the first half of 2024 as they did a year earlier, according to a report by analytics firm TRM Labs.
The size of thefts in January-June amounted to $1.38 billion compared to $657 million in the same period last year.
As a year earlier, the bulk of the volume was stolen in a small number of attacks. Five hacks allowed hackers to steal 70% of the total semiannual volume.
The largest of these was the hack of Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin, in which attackers stole more than $300 million worth of bitcoins.
That said, there were no fundamental changes in the security of the cryptocurrency ecosystem that could have contributed to the increase in thefts, TRM notes. The number of attacks has also not changed significantly over the year.
However, the average value of cryptocurrencies rose in the first half of the year, which may have affected the dollar valuation of thefts.
The governmental emergency response team of Ukraine CERT-UA, operating under the State Special Communications Service, reported the distribution of dangerous emails with the subject line “Free Primary Legal Aid”.
“The letters come from an email address in the gov.ua domain (probably compromised) and have a password-protected attachment “Algorithm for the actions of family members of a missing soldier LegalAid.rar,” the press service of the State Special Communications Service said on Saturday.
“The specified RAR archive contains the ‘Algorithm_LegalAid.xlsm’ document, the opening of which will ultimately lead to the download and execution of the DarkCrystal RAT malware,” the experts warned.
Given the email addresses of email recipients, experts suggest that the attack is aimed at operators and telecommunications providers in Ukraine.
Activity is tracked by ID UAC-0113. These malefactors in June already carried out cyberattack on the media organizations of Ukraine. (https://bit.ly/3yklzml), the State Special Communications Service emphasized.
