Crypto Crash Rattles Cybercriminals, Pushing Them Beyond Ransomware – By Bree Fowler (CNET) / July 2, 2022
What’s happening: Crypto prices continue to plunge, but cybercriminals still need the currencies for ransomware attacks.
Why it matters: Some experts say the price drops might be pushing cybercriminals away from ransomware and toward other kinds of cybercrime that involve stealing traditional money.
The collapse of cryptocurrencies is rippling through the world of ransomware, security researchers say, even though bitcoin, ether and other digital tokens remain the payment of choice for cybercriminals locking up corporate computer systems.
Over the past few months, the value of cryptocurrencies has plummeted amid rising inflation, economic shocks caused by the war in Ukraine and falling global stock markets. Hundreds of billions of dollars in value has been wiped out over that period, which is starting to be known as crypto winter. On one day alone, more than $200 billion in value was wiped from the broad crypto market.
The widespread fall has forced cybercriminals to recalculate their ransoms, security professionals say, and has pushed out of business some of the services that handle their ill-gotten gains, such as dark web crypto-swapping marketplaces. It’s also accelerating a preexisting shift toward crimes such as malware attacks and corporate phishing scams that target actual dollars, rather than crypto
