One of the top Russian-language underground forums has been organized a “contest” for the past month, calling on its community to submit “eccentric” ways to manage cryptocurrency attacks.
The forum’s organizer, in a broadcast made on April 2020-21, appeals to the members to submit papers that assess the probability of targeting cryptocurrency-related technology consist up the theft of private keys and wallets, in inclusion to covering unconventional cryptocurrency mining software, smart contracts, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The contest consists of total prize money of $115,000 awarded to the best research which is likely to continue till September 1.
Which Research is Suppose to be at the Top?
“So deep, the top research (according to forum member voting) consist topics like creating a blockchain front-end websites that captures crucial data such as private keys, and balance , generating a new cryptocurrency blockchain by scratch, expansion of the hash rate speed of mining farms and botnets, and demonstrating a characteristic tool that interprets logs for cryptocurrency amount from victim machines,” said Michael DeBolt, Intel 471’s Senior Vice President of Global Intelligence, in an email with the Researchers.
Various entries are considered at managing APIs from well-known cryptocurrency-related services or decentralized-file technology to generate private keys to cryptocurrency wallets as well as generating phishing websites that permit criminals to accumulate keys to cryptocurrency wallets and their seed terminology.
Granting the sensitive role played by underground marketplaces like Hydra permitting cybercrime gangs to cash out their cryptocurrency harvest, it’s credible that the process that allows Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operators to exploit pressure on victims and force them to deliver into their ransom demands could get traction. But DeBolt stated that various entries so far have been about guidance or tools for how to devastate cryptocurrency assets, which are implausible to be of any “urgent momentous value” to RaaS cartels.
What are the Other Contests?
Even though other details of encouraging contests involving topics like mobile OS botnets, ATM and point-of-sale (PoS) setups, and duplicate GPS signals have been seen before in the cybercrime underground, the current evolution is yet another gesture that criminals are increasingly analyzed cutting-edge approaches to help further their aims.
“The considerable outcome from the attacker side is that this type of motivate knowledge-sharing strengthen the existing interconnected and collective cybercrime underground by centralizing unauthorized resources in one place and making it easier for like-minded adversary who wish to seek cryptocurrency hacks by providing them a platform to participate, confer, and share ideas,” DeBolt concluded.
Further, he added that “Conversely, the huge outcome from the opposite side is that we can take advantage of these open contests, to increase awareness of recent and materialize techniques and tactics that we can assemble for. It also brightens things for us and helps to level up the playing fields.
