Here is a troubling trend: hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency have been stolen over the last year, and most of it has not been recovered.
According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, $1.2 billion in cryptocurrencies have been stolen since the start of 2017, and this includes both reported and unreported theft. The theft coincides with bitcoin’s popularity reaching an all-time high and hundreds of digital currencies pop up.
What’s worse is that just one-fifth (perhaps less) has been recovered by law enforcement agencies. The authorities ostensibly have a difficult time tracking down the unscrupulous individuals.
“One problem that we’re seeing in addition to the criminal activity like drug trafficking and money laundering using cryptocurrencies is the theft of these tokens by bad guys,” said Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of cryptocurrency security firm CipherTrace, in an interview with Reuters.
Jevans added that the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation will facilitate greater theft.
“GDPR will negatively impact the overall security of the internet and will also inadvertently aid cybercriminals,” said Jevans. “By restricting access to critical information, the new law will significantly hinder investigations into cybercrime, cryptocurrency theft, phishing, ransomware, malware, fraud and crypto-jacking,” he said.
At the time of this writing, bitcoin is trading at $7,525. You still have to feel bad for those people who bought in at $19,000.
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