In a shocking revelation, Darknet Phisher, Phishkingz, narrates how bitcoin stealing has enabled him to make well over $1 million within 12 months. He revealed that in the last 14 months, he had sold about 500 bitcoin on Localbitcoins, all of which was realized from phishing.
Phishkingz also claims to be a dark vendor. He explained that his decision to venture into bitcoin stealing through phishing was inspired after he detected an error which allowed him to see new members who joined the Alphabay forum. He would then send private messages to the new members with a link to a verification process.
From their responses, phishkingz will extract their login details as well as the mnemonic phrases. PGP personal password and keys well as pin codes are also obtained through this process.
He goes further to save a bookmark with blockchain.info, select 50 addresses together at 20 minutes intervals, searching for deposits. A significant fraction of the withdrawals is handled manually, avoiding bots. According to the hacker, his dealings grew to the extent where he sought more hands on the ‘job’ and had to employ ‘staffs.’ He claimed that his bitcoin stealing workforce grew to about 27 at a point.
Customers Security Wasn’t a Priority to the Admins Judging from his experience on the forum, Phishkingz claims that Alphabay’s admins didn’t actually provide adequate support to his victims.
He referred to Big Muscles (an admin on the forum) as “a stupid one.” He explains that BM would give him 50% access to accounts on his provision of mnemonic phrase, knowing the account was phished.
Since Alphabay has gone extinct, Phishkingz has shifted his operations to the Dream Market where, according to him, he has already stolen 4 BTC within 24 hours on the new site.
Besides Phishkingz, bitcoin hackers have increased recently. The famous Tezos ICO is currently admired by phishers as clone sites are now being hosted with the aim of stealing bitcoins.
Other skillful hackers have followed suit, building up sites for fake ICOs, luring victims to downloading malicious content posing as project whitepapers. As bitcoins and altcoins gain more popularity, so also are the hackers increasing on the internet; this seems to be the price to pay for the wide-spread adoption of crypto currency
