Criminals are still using Bitcoin

Europol found Bitcoin currency to remain the number one cryptocurrency for Internet hackers. This insight comes from Europol’s latest Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) report. According to the study, cybercriminals still love Bitcoin. Europol also pointed out in the report that the share of Bitcoin value in the cryptocurrency market has fallen sharply, from more than 80% to less than 35%. However, whether it is ransomware, DDoS attacks or other cybercrime, cryptocurrency is still the main payment mechanism, which includes a large number of commodities in the dark market and demand for extortion.

In turn, hackers attacked the cryptocurrency industry because of the increasing acceptance of cryptocurrencies by the network. Europol pointed out that hackers are modifying old-school methods such as phishing malware to target victims of cryptocurrency more effectively. At present, Crypto-jacking cryptocurrency robbery refers to hackers secretly infecting or arbitrarily exploiting cryptocurrencies without authorization.

Cybercriminals are carrying out major encryption activities on the Internet. Recently, hackers injected more than 200,000 routers using modified CoinHive scripts. It should be noted that browsers mining cryptocurrencies are not particularly illegal. Europol revealed that by the end of 2018, cryptocurrency mining scripts would run on 2.2% of Alexa’s top 100,000 sites.

Europol specifically pointed out that members of the terrorist organization Islamic State seem to like ZCash, and ISIS has used ZCash to purchase websites. Fortunately, Europol does recognize that terrorists do not directly use cryptocurrencies to fund any attacks in Europe.