In the first half of this year, cyber criminals stole around $4.26 billion through cryptocurrency theft, scams, and fraud campaigns, a recent CipherTrace report shows. This indicates a recent surge in criminal activity because the number is far higher than the yearly total for 2018, which was $1.7 billion.
The study highlights the prevalence of blended attack campaigns involving multiple techniques as well as the increasing reliance on malicious insiders that provide attackers with access to administrator accounts. In Q2 of 2019, threat actors stole $125 million in crytpocurrencies from exchanges. Most of these thefts were the work of compromised insiders.
Read more: Hackers Stole Over $4 Billion From Crypto Crimes In 2019 So Far, Up From $1.7 Billion In All Of 2018
