A Russian-speaking cybercriminal forum has hosted a contest for cybercriminals to provide methods for targeting cryptocurrency-related technology.
According to Bleeping Computer, members of the forum were provided one month to submit their papers from April 20 and enter a competition that offers more than $100,000 in prizes.
The forum asked for research papers that investigated various ways users could steal private keys and cryptocurrency wallets, smart contracts, uncommon mining software and non-fungible tokens.
Threat intelligence firm Intel 471 noted that since the original contest began, another forum member added a further $15,000 to the prize pool. In addition, anyone submitting their paper was promised $50 with the ‘best research’ promised up to $10,000.
Intel said, “One entry looked at manipulating APIs from popular cryptocurrency-related services or decentralized-file technology in order to obtain private keys to cryptocurrency wallets.”
The company added another user described how to form a phishing site for grabbing the keys to cryptocurrency wallets as well as the parallel seed phrases – an essential part of recovering digital wallet access.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab recently said Russia must do more to tackle cybercriminals operating from within their national borders.
Talking at the National Cyber Security Centre’s CYBERUK 21 conference, Raab challenged Russian authorities to tackle the growing threat of cybercrime in the region and said they must do more to prosecute gangs instead of ‘shielding them’.
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