Bitcoin gets popular but risky according to Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab’s latest report “Financial Cyber ​​Threats in 2013” refers to cybercrime affecting this virtual currency.

According to the “Financial Cyber ​​Threats in 2013” conducted by Kaspersky Lab, malware targeting Bitcoin were quite frequent in 2013. The number of attacks against the crypto- currency has actually increased by more than 2.5 to achieve 8.3 million recorded incidents.

Created especially to allow anonymous Internet payments, the bitcoin has become more success in the past few years. Early 2013, its value was over $ 13.06 and last December, it peaked at a record rate of $ 1200. Last year, the price of virtual currency had ups and downs, but since April 2013, it never fell below $ 80. This has inevitably attracted cybercriminals’ attention. And bitcoins are often easy prey for cybercriminals. When users store them on their computers in an unencrypted form, hackers only have to take ownership of the “Portfolio” file for information about its contents and access the victim’s account.

Out of the 30 samples financial malware, studied in the study of Kaspersky Lab, 9 involved a program designed to steal bitcoins. They represented 29% of total financial cyberattacks based on malicious applications.

“In 2013, the bitcoin value has increased by more than 85, which has attracted cybercriminals’s attention. Towards the end of the year, the number of attacked by malware targeting bitcoins users began to approach the number of victims of more traditional bank cyber threats. Bitcoins holders should be particularly careful because it is almost impossible to recover the stolen virtual money. This is the risk associated with the use of a crypto- currency that circulates without any government’s control, “says Sergey Lozhkin, senior security researcher for Kaspersky Lab.

The tools used by cybercriminals to steal bitcoins fall into two categories. The first consists of programs aiming at stealing portfolio files. Applications of the second category are installing software that generates bitcoins (operation called “mining”) on an infected computer. In value, bitcoins portfolio thieves have committed twice as many attacks in 2013.

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