Cryptocurrency thefts, nearly $ 1 billion in damage since the beginning of the year. The hacker attacks on exchanges do not stop.
Il cryptocurrency theft by hacking of the exchanges and of the trading platforms rose to $ 927 million in the first nine months of the year, or nearly 250 percent more than the 2017 level, according to a report by the US cyber security company ciphertra by released last Wednesday.
The report, which analyzes criminal activity and money laundering in the digital currency market, also shows a steadily growing number of minor thefts, in the order of $ 20-60 million, for a total of $ 173 million. in the third quarter only. Digital currencies stolen from stock exchanges in 2017 amounted to $ 266 million, according to a previous report by ciphertra by.
"Regulators are still a couple of years behind because there are only a few countries that have really enforced strong laws against money laundering," he said. Dave Jevans, CEO ciphertra by, in an interview with Reuters. Jevans - who is also the president of the working group phishing, a global organization that aims to help solve cybercrime - also said that there are likely to be 50% more criminal transactions than have been tracked for this report. For example, CipherTrace is aware of over 60 million dollars in crypto currency which has been stolen, but not reported, thus suggesting that in reality the numbers would be even greater.
Finally, the data showed that the best cryptocurrency exchanges come in part from countries with weak anti-money laundering regulations, and that they have been used to launder USD 2,5 billion in bitcoins since 2009. The phenomenon is broad: " all exchanges receive these recycled funds and it is not really possible to stop them, "said Jevans adding that" this is the reason why we often learn criminal matters after they have happened, there is no way of knowing it in real time. You can know 80-90 percent of the time, but it's 100% impossible to know. "
