Cybercrime - More Than $225 Million in ETH Got Stolen

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"At the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security."
_{(Jodi Rell)}

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Cyber Criminals "earn" Millions on ICO´s

_{(Source - Cryptocoinsnews.com)}

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During this year we could see hundreds of Initial coin offerings (ICO) taking place all around the world. In total it´s estimated that they have raised more than $1.6 Billion in funding and therefore attracted some major attention of regulators and officials within the last weeks.

The recent public exposure of ICO´s through Celebrities like Floyd Mayweather or Paris Hilton might just have done its part to finally have officials react as it was the case in China some days ago. CryptoCurrencies are for sure a risky investment so that it´s understandable in some way that regulations will be necessary in order to secure the market for small Investors.

Speaking about security of Crypto markets and ICO´s it should be mentioned that cyber criminals acquired more than $225 Million in ETH through hacks or phishing attacks on insecure ICO websites or systems. It´s estimated that 10% of all ICO Funds are actually held by Cyber Criminals...

The scary part is how easy it seems to be for them to acquire huge amounts of Ethereum in a short period of time. Through the change of the ETH Wallet address on the CoinDash website a total of $9 Million was lost, while the hack into the Enigma ICO accounts added up to $500.000 through a fraudulant announcement of the ICO being started.

How to protect your funds?

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Unfortunately there is no golden rule out there how to protect yourself from cyber crime. But there are for sure some things you may take a closer look on before sending any funds to participate in an ICO.

First of all you might take a closer look on the official announcements. Are the aligned on all public accounts and professionally done? This is especially a recommended step, whenever you get a personal message as reputable businesses normally don´t communicate with customers directly but rather through public announcements.

Further definitely check, whether you are on the right website. Many times cyber criminals just create similar homepages and advertise them on different search engines to lead you the wrong way. In order to stay up to date on known scams, you might like to check the Ethereum Scam Database (https://etherscamdb.info/scams/) before transferring any funds.

Last but not least some point that can´t be mentioned too often is to keep your private keys save and not to store your tokens on any exchange. Do some research and make sure that you store your tokens in a safe wallet, which only you own the private keys on!

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