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My takeaways 1. The prime target list is people with crypto accounts. You can steal from them much more easily than the real banking system. The guys who got M

My takeaways 1. The prime target list is people with crypto accounts. You can steal from them much more easily than the real banking system. The guys who got Mark Cuban must have been super pumped until they only got 40 grand. 2. Remote Teams of thieves who scam remote people over the phone tend to be morally lax enough to steal from their teammates and so the teams only last a few weeks. Which is weirdly opposite to the advice for bankers which is crimes occur less when WFH 3. Why did I not get the domain “commandandcontrolserver.com” - that’s cool! 4. This is so easy to fall for. But it’s fairly hard to steal “real” money, and honestly we should pressure banks to make it even harder - something along the lines of “want a loan, visit a branch in person” and similar fraud reduction choices. Criminals are showing us the way - they target easy to steal / easy to get away crypto - so run in the opposite direction

nullc 2y ago
The FTC estimates overseas internet/telephone scammers stole an estimate $122 billion dollars from Americans in 2022, virtually all of it in traditional banking. Have any data to suggest that these 'crypto' attacks are within two orders of magnitude of that? This particular scam is targeting crypto users, for sure, but to some extent that's a "who has money" proxy. Other scamming groups do things like use property records merged with personal information leaks to target people who own expensive real-estate. I don't intend to argue that a bunch of crypto stuff and practices aren't gravely insecure, but if you think you're going to be safe by not using it... you're just wrong. And good practices, e.g. with Bitcoin, may be significantly more secure against these kinds of remote scammers than a bank account is. I think a better lesson is that any inbound communication is a danger and should be avoided when possible and treated with great scrutiny otherwise.

nullc 2y ago

The FTC estimates overseas internet/telephone scammers stole an estimate $122 billion dollars from Americans in 2022, virtually all of it in traditional banking. Have any data to suggest that these 'crypto' attacks are within two orders of magnitude of that? This particular scam is targeting crypto users, for sure, but to some extent that's a "who has money" proxy. Other scamming groups do things like use property records merged with personal information leaks to target people who own expensive real-estate. I don't intend to argue that a bunch of crypto stuff and practices aren't gravely insecure, but if you think you're going to be safe by not using it... you're just wrong. And good practices, e.g. with Bitcoin, may be significantly more secure against these kinds of remote scammers than a bank account is. I think a better lesson is that any inbound communication is a danger and should be avoided when possible and treated with great scrutiny otherwise.