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The post-pandemic world has seen cryptocurrencies and blockchain products in general catapult in valuation and adoption. “Web3”, “DeFi”, and “NFT” have become household terms and the sector is growing so fast that people and businesses are pouring in with dollar signs in their eyes and high hopes to get a piece of the pie. A massive land grab reminiscent of the dot com bubble is taking place with fortunes amassed in the blink of an eye and wiped out just as quickly due to extreme price volatility, regulatory frothiness, hacks, and scams.
Like sharks to chum, the malvertisers have long since arrived to play their role. In this blog post we will look at several chains that start with an ad and end with cryptocurrency theft, usually via phishing.
Hardware Wallets
When it comes to blockchain based assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many others, a private key is used to sign transactions. The transactions are then broadcast onto the blockchain in order to send funds or interact with smart contracts. Managing private keys is hard, so this is typically done by wallet software. Most wallets, during the “setup” stage will generate a deterministic “seed phrase” that users can use to backup their wallet. Seed phrases are a very helpful abstraction, because they consist of human readable words as opposed to gibberish. So let’s say that you have a wallet on your laptop, but the laptop gets damaged, lost, or stolen. If you have your seed phrase secure, you can restore you wallet on a new laptop and regain control of funds that would otherwise be lost.
A hardware wallet is a physical device that is used to secure crypto assets. It adds an extra layer of security by requiring the user to physically interact with the device in order to confirm transactions. This way, funds won’t get sent and interactions won’t happen by the wallet software alone initializing a transaction. Of course, if the seed phrase for the hardware wallet were to get leaked, then the point is moot.
Enter malvertisers…
These are search ads that target Ledger related keywo
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Read the original article: A Whirlwind Tour Of Crypto Phishing