Tag Archives: Bitcoin

Elon Musk

Crypto spam bots go quiet as Musk guarantees towards prosecute scammers

Some individuals in the crypto Twitter area are actually currently stating a decrease in the variety of fraud bots after Elon Musk’s newest modifications towards the social networks system.

Elon Musk’s newest barrage in his battle versus crypto spam bots on Twitter shows up towards have actually created a genuine effect, along with the crypto neighborhood stating a large decrease in the variety of bots reacting to their messages.

In a Dec. 11 message, the Twitter CEO hinted that “bots remain in for a shock tomorrow” as well as later on discussed that they’ve discovered a handful of individuals responsible for a a great deal of bot/troll profiles as well as the system will certainly be actually shutting down IP addresses of “understood poor stars.”

He after that subsequented through discussing that while scammers may attempt various other techniques towards prevent the IP deal with obstruct, Twitter will certainly be actually “shutting all of them down as quickly as they appear.”

Shibetoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of Billy Markus, co-creator of meme coin Dogecoin, informed Musk in a Dec. 11 message, “I created an examination message as well as rather than viewing fifty bot responds I just viewed one a lot development, extremely buzz.”

Various other individuals likewise mosted likely to examination Musk’s newest modifications. PlanB, a Bitcoin expert as well as investor, published a graph towards view the number of bots will respond. During the time of composing, no reactions coming from bots possessed appeared in the remarks.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin likewise kept in mind that while “Twitter *seems* to become partially much a lot better towards utilize recently,” he could not inform if certainly there certainly possessed been actually a decrease in bots because of Musk.

twitter elon musk

“No concept ways to different apart things Elon performed vs crypto-winter vs my mind picturing modifications that may not be really certainly there certainly,” he stated.

Some have actually stated that the bot reactions still appear on messages, however are actually extremely rapidly eliminated due to the system.

Associated: ‘Twitter will certainly perform great deals of stupid things’ in the happening months: Elon Musk

Twitter spam as well as fraud bots have actually been actually a afflict on the system as well as were actually viewed through Musk as among his leading concerns for Twitter after taking the reins in Oct.

In his newest message, Musk likewise hinted that the system will certainly be actually intending towards get lawsuit versus scammers on Twitter later on, however really did not deal any type of extra information.

“Twitter will certainly likewise be actually transferring to prosecute scammers anywhere on Planet,” he stated.

Beware of Bitcoin Investment Emails Pushing Clipboard Hijackers

A new malspam campaign is under that contains an attachment that when executed will install a Windows clipboard hijacker that attempts to steal Bitcoins from its victims.

This new campaign was discovered by security site My Online Security who received a series of Bitcoin investment related emails. These emails had subject line that included “FW: Review BTC” or “FW: Review Your New Bitcoin International Investment Update 2019” and contained a archive attachment.

Spam Email

This archive includes a JSE file, which is a JavaScript file, that contains a Base64 encoded executable stored in the file as shown below. When the JSE file is executed, it will decode the Base64 encoded file, save it to %Temp%\rewjavaef.exe, and then execute it.

Script

Once executed, a file called Task.exe will be saved to the %AppData%\svchost.exe\ folder as shown below. This file will then be executed as well.

Task.exe

To make sure that the Task.exe is started every time a victim logs into Windows, a startup file called svchost.exe.vbs will be created in the user’s Startup folder.

Startup folder script

The Task.exe program is actually a clipboard hijacker malware that is based off the open source BitPing program created by a security researcher named A Shadow.

A cryptocurrency clipboard hijacker is malware that monitors the Windows Clipboard for certain data, and when detected, swaps it with different data that the attacker wants. In this particular case, Task.exe will monitor the Clipboard for bitcoin addresses, and if one is detected, will swap it for the 3MSghqkGW8QhHs6HD3UxNVp9SRpGvPkk5W address, which is owned by the attacker.

Source Code

As cryptocurrency addresses are typically long and hard to remember, attackers understand that when sending bitcoins, most people will copy an address from another page, site, or program. This malware will detect the copied address in the clipboard and replace it with their own in the hopes the victim won’t notice the swap. Then when the bitcoins are sent, they would be sent to the address under the attacker’s control rather than the intended recipient.

The best way to avoid malware like this is to not open attachments that you receive from strangers or that you are not expecting. Furthermore, you should never run attachments that could execute commands on the computer. This includes JSE, JS, VBS, CMD, PS1, .EXE, or BAT file extensions.

If Windows is not configured to display file extensions, it is strongly suggested that you enable the display of extensions so you do not open malicious documents or executables by mistake.