A woman in New Hampshire has become the latest victim of crypto theft. The lady – who is only going by her first name Michelle – says that she has four crypto accounts, one of which was hacked using her Samsung phone. She has since lost thousands in digital funds.
Michelle Has Lost Thousands
Things took an ugly turn when her phone notified her that an update was available. She clicked on it, and it wasn’t long before the phone stopped working altogether. She explained in an interview:
It said, ‘Samsung account update,’ and I pressed it, and I think that’s what it was. Within probably an hour, my phone went down.
Michelle then had to get in touch with her cell provider, which ultimately got the device working again, but when she logged into one of her digital currency accounts, it had no funds available. She says:
It’s about $15,000 that’s gone, just like that.
She got in touch with her provider again and asked for help in restoring any emails that may have been deleted. That’s when she saw several notices of withdrawals. Michelle commented:
He would know my account screen name, forgot password, they’d email the password, and then he got it and he got in.
At the time of writing, the hacked account has been frozen. She says she has received a ransom note from the attacker, and that several thousand dollars are now in limbo. Many crypto analysts believe that in clicking the update, Michelle permitted malicious code to make its way onto her phone.
James Gorman of Cyber Defense Media Group explained:
When you do that, you then open up your phone to be available to whoever from wherever for whatever. She got hit by the equivalent of a street thug walking down the street and stealing her purse.
He also commented that cyberthieves are using complicated tools to gain access to digital accounts:
You can lease that technology. You can rent that technology. You can create that technology. It’s all out there on what we call the dark web.
He commented that if people are looking to keep their accounts safe, they need to take necessary measures such as instilling two-factor authentication and using difficult-to-guess passwords. He says:
You can make yourself harder to hack by thinking before clicking and keeping your software and operating systems up to date.
Keep Yourself Safe!
As upset as she is about the situation, Michelle is sharing her experience as a means of keeping people in the loop so they can take necessary precautions. She mentioned:
I was like, if they can do this to me, I want to let people know you are never safe.
Illicit crypto behavior is becoming extremely dangerous, with the BBB now listing crypto scams as the world’s second most common scams.