Fans of bitcoin (BTC) "mined" supermarkets in the United States
Date: 2023-06-27 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: BLOCKCHAIN
In the United States, there was a wave of telephone mining of supermarkets demanding redemption in bitcoin and gift cards
An entire chain of American supermarkets faced a wave of telephone mining. The Wall Street Journal writes about this, citing representatives of supermarkets.
It is reported that the wave of telephone mining has been going on for several months. Walmart, Kroger and Whole Foods Market shopping centers were under attack. In their mining, the attackers demand a ransom in bitcoin (BTC) or digital gift cards. According to a Kroger spokesman, the FBI is conducting the case, but the details of the investigation were not disclosed. According to the newspaper, it is unclear whether the telephone attacks are part of a single campaign.
However, it turned out that the demands of the extortionists are not similar to the actions of foreign hackers. For example, during one of the telephone mining, the attacker demanded a ransom of $5000 in BTC. For comparison, hackers of the Colonial Pipeline pipeline system were able to receive a ransom of $5 million in cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency has long been an integral tool for ransomware. In 2021, Trend Micro analysts found out that unknown people began to extort bitcoins, posing as the disbanded hacker group DarkSide. The attackers sent emails to companies in the energy and food industries. In the letters, the scammers claimed to have hacked corporate networks and threatened to publicly disclose confidential information if the ransom was not paid. The ransom amount was 100 BTC.
In the Russian Federation, cryptocurrency, however, does not often appear in shadow schemes. For example, in 2022, the deputy director of Rosfinmonitoring, German Neglyad, said that only isolated cases of the use of cryptocurrencies for the financing of terrorism were noticed in the country. According to him, so far the systemic nature of the financing of terrorism using cryptocurrencies has not been noticed in the Russian Federation. Neglyad noted that the country has much more problems with drug trafficking.
