$1.1M worth of cryptocurrency stolen in 2018 by dark web hackers
Darkweb is presumably the most dangerous part of the internet where many criminal acts occur anonymously, enabling private date leakage, pornography, digital and paper money theft. Initially, it was always considered difficult to get to the dark web as you need special software to dodge the internet police, but with time accessing the Darkweb has become very easy as more hackers are penetrating into the deeper side of the internet, called the dark or deep web.
Cybersecurity company, Carbon Black announced that cryptocurrency of worth nearly $1.1 million has been found stolen so far in 2018 and the reason is attributed to web hackers. Carbon Black Security strategist, Rick McElroy tells CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/07/1-point-1b-in-cryptocurrency-was-stolen-this-year-and-it-was-easy-to-do.html):
"It's surprising just how easy it is without any tech skill to commit cybercrimes like ransomware. It's not always these large nefarious groups, it's in anybody's hands."
The reason digital currency theft is becoming more widescale is due to the increasing number of cryptomarkets (approximately 12,000 markets worldwide), some of which are frauds. Along with that, around 34,000 cryptocurrency hacking platforms can be found on the dark web.
McElroy points out the biggest reason why people steal cryptocurrency by stating:
"You have nations that are teaching coding, but there are no jobs. It could just be two people in Romania needing to pay rent."
What he means by that is there are some amazing people out there with extraordinary hacking skills that could be used in a positive way, but due to lack of jobs, these people go towards the easy way of making money, that is robbing cryptocurrencies.
Another reason why so much cryptocurrency is being stolen easily is due to the fact that the new investors do not seem to fully understand the transactions of cryptocurrency. They do not secure their digital currency, which is a must because cryptocurrency exchange is not like any other banking exchange with insurance.
"Usually, we rely on banks, the tools are out there but investors need to know how to do this. A lot of people are unaware in this new gold rush, people are using cloud wallets and not securing their money."
Hackers would rather go for Bitcoin as it is expected to rise in the coming months, but they go for the smaller currencies as they cannot be easily traceable.