Very often we hear about the theft of various quantities of Bitcoin or that unsuspecting investors have been plundered of their capital.
With this short article I will try to warn you of all those potentially high or relatively high risk activities that you may face.
Lately we hear about some hacker who managed to breach an Exchange or a ponzi scheme that managed to defraud thousands of people.
This article would like to try to highlight the warning signs and the working of some of these crimes.
Hacking an Exchange
Before starting it is necessary to make a small clarification on the word, in fact it would not be correct as it is more accurate to say Crackare.
In common language, the necessary distinction is not made but it is fair to know that a hacker is not a criminal subject.
He is "simply" an extremely skilled programmer in the operating system he works on.
Pass me the parallel, but it's a bit like a Jazz player who manages to make his instrument play unthinkable things.
To succeed in Cracking an Exchange, the Cracker does nothing but illegally withdraw a quantity of Cryptocurrencies (large or small is not relevant).
While the transaction is being processed by the Miners, through a process called "Transfer Catching", the Cracker comes into possession of both the public and private keys of the server.
At this point the server is in his hands and he can make him do what he wants, up to empty the Exchange and transfer the "loot" to a Cold Wallet (external Wallet such as, for example, a Ledger).
In general, this is the most used method, as the other method is to break security with "brute force".
An attempt is made to recover the encrypted key by trial and error, but the technology has implemented such security that to find the combination it would take all the computing power in the world committed for 100 years.
Cracking attacks have reduced some Exchanges to the last penny and continue to do so: fortunately there are hackers who continue to make "work" more and more difficult for them.
In the event of theft on an Exchange with a client compensation policy, investors have no problem. In fact, they may not even notice the Breach.
In any case, it is always better to keep your capital on a Wallet and not on an Exchange.
Noteworthy is the famous BINANCE Exchange, which recently was the subject of a breach and managed to deal with the incident by passing the shortfall as transaction fees.
Phishing
This is the best known method: those of us who have never received an email that alarms us about the blocking of our account and to unblock it they ask us for credentials.
If we insert them we are in the hands of the Cracker: he is aware of our personal data and can use them as he sees fit, but he will certainly not make a payment ...
In some cases, Phishing hides inside a Malware that is installed on the PC and makes our terminal visible remotely to the Cracker who has complete management of our personal data.
In some cases, the pressure of the keys for the detection of passwords is recorded.
These are what we can call Cyber ??crimes, now let's analyze the crimes that are perpetrated against unsuspecting investors.
Crypto less common crimes
Regular coercion
This category of crimes is not strictly linked to cryptocurrencies, in fact it is theft and robbery.
The question arises: how is it possible to physically steal what is saved on a digital register?
Well, the answer is simple: the access credentials are extracted (often by more or less truthful blackmail) in order to manage the Wallet or Plafond on the Exchange and transfer it to one's own Wallet.
Malware Network
This procedure consists in connecting the Malware on a public Wi-Fi network, in this way as soon as any person connects to the network the Malware is installed and the attacker has free access to our device.
Some useful tips.
First of all, you need to keep your cryptocurrencies in a Wallet and not in the Exchange, where we leave only the funds we need to carry out the Trading operations;
We do not give our Wallet login credentials to anyone for any reason in the world (this applies to any private credential). The owners of the services to solve problems do not have any need to enter our profile.
One final clarification: all transactions carried out with cryptocurrencies are anonymous, but they are recorded so all movements can be tracked using the identification codes.
Therefore, cryptocurrencies stolen illegally are visible to the authorities, but until someone asks for their conversion into fiat, it is almost impossible to trace who may have stolen them.
So far I have considered the more technical ones from which it is more difficult to defend oneself; there are other types of crimes that also affect the world of cryptocurrencies and work with the same methodologies as fiat currencies.
The best known are the pyramid structures, better identified as Ponzi schemes. In other words, the victim pays a certain amount of having in exchange a passive income on what he has invested, while, in reality, only the first people who started the scam receive the proceeds.
Let us remember well that a high return underlies in all ways a high risk, so those who promise stellar returns cannot guarantee us the risk that we would have to take on in order to obtain them; so the possibilities are 2: 1- if the investment goes wrong the problems are all mine. 2- The promised return was a lie and we were scammed, blinded by our greed.
