Skip to main content

Crypto phishing scams tripled compared to last year to 6.6% of all phishing attacks

 


Phishing Attacks 2021

In 2021, cryptocurrency was responsible for only 2% of phishing attacks, as shown in the chart below. The dominant verticals were financial services, social media, and SaaS/webmail, which together contributed to over 68% of attacks.


However, the first quarter of 2021 was a long time ago in the cryptocurrency world. The market cap of the industry was just under $800 billion at the start of this quarter (it reached nearly $2 trillion after explosive growth).


So how do these numbers compare to the first quarter of 2022? Crypto market cap was $2.2 trillion. $ at the start of the quarter (and exiting the quarter at $2.1 trillion, ie it was relatively stable - the bloodbath started in the second quarter). As the crypto market is much larger and more established - the market cap was 2.8x larger in 2022 than it was at the start of 2021 - this ties it to the fact that the percentage of phishing attacks has increased by more than that in the last year Tripled from 2% to 6.6%.


The full chart showing all industries can be seen below. It shows the current position of how cryptocurrencies are performing compared to other industries.

Development compared to other sectors

Another finding of the figures is the fact that phishing attacks on the payments sector increased by 6.1%, although the industry has not moved much in terms of its overall size.


This provides further context to the growth of crypto numbers as the sector is not dissimilar to payments, suggesting it may become more of a target for phishing attacks. Nonetheless, the fact that the number of attacks targeting payments has soared is far more troubling than developments in cryptocurrencies, which have good reason to point to the growing size of the industry and the fact that regulation has yet to catch up.

 


Industry context size

However, given the size of the cryptocurrency, which now ranks above several industries in the study, this has to be taken into account - the size of the market obviously affects how common phishing attacks are.


In fact, the SaaS/Webmail industry has a significantly bigger problem than the crypto industry, accounting for 20% of attacks and an estimated industry value of under $200B. The spread of attacks on social media also surpasses the crypto industry with a value of $200 billion and a share of 12.5% ​​(in the previous year this figure was still over 20%). The payments industry also compares poorly to cryptocurrencies, as the chart shows.

 


Conclusion

First, to assess what it all means, the move from 2% to 6.6% over the last year is roughly commensurate with the industry's growth and is to be expected. Additionally, crypto doesn't appear to be an outlier compared to other industries, as the number of attacks compared to industry size lags significantly behind others like SaaS, social media, and payments.


So the data suggests that while cryptocurrencies remain a problem, they are unfairly given the reputation of the Wild West.


There is no denying that the crypto industry definitely has a dark side, albeit a tiny fraction of the innovations and advances being made elsewhere. And it's that dark side that will hopefully be curbed and regulators will keep a close eye on. However, when you look at the numbers and compare it to other industries, crypto is not alone, and the good far outweighs the bad.

My Top Picks
Honeygain - Passive earner that pays in BTC or PayPal
MandalaExchange -The Best no KYC crypto Exchange! 
BetFury - Play And Earn BFG for daily Bitcoin and ETH dividends!
Pipeflare - Faucet that pays in ZCash and Matic, Games pay in DAI
Womplay - Mobile dApp gaming platform that rewards in EOS and Bitcoin
Cointiply - The #1 Crypto Earning Site
Torum - Join the latest Social Network and earn TRM for Free! 
LiteCoinPay - The #1 FaucetPay earner for Litecoin 
LBRY/Odysee - YouTube Alternative that lets you earn Money by viewing videos!
FaucetPay - The #1 Microwallet Platform
FREEBTC - The #1 FaucetPay earner for Satoshi's
FaucetCrypto - An earning/faucet site that pays out instantly
FireFaucet - An earning site that pays better for some than Cointiply
DogeFaucet - Dogecoin Faucet
xFaucet - BTC, ETH, LTC, Doge, Dash, Tron, DGB, BCH, BNB, ZEC, FEY - Claim every 5 minutes
Konstantinova - BTC, ETH, LTC, Doge, Dash, Tron, DGB, BNB, ZEC, USDT, FEY, 25 Claims Daily

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The 5 largest platforms for non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles

  Since the beginning of 2021, non-fungible tokens (NFT) have had no holding back and the sector is setting new records almost every day.  More and more artists, stars and brands are realizing the potential - NFT are well on their way to catapulting the crypto space into the mainstream.  But which collectibles are currently the most popular? What are NFT? NFT are unique tokens that cannot be exchanged one-for-one for an equivalent token.  Any asset that is tokenizable can be an NFT.  This includes, for example, (digital) works of art, trading cards, game items and crypto domains.  Theoretically, however, real estate or securities can also be mapped as NFT. NFTs can be used to transparently map ownership structures on a public blockchain.  This allows them to store value just like real objects, even if additional copies are easy to make.  For example, the original picture of the Mona Lisa is significantly more valuable than a photo, as everyone kno...

CARDALONIA: THE CARDANO METAVERSE OPENS THE GATES!

  Have you ever been to Cardalonia? With these words, the Cardano Metaverse called Cardalonia starts the gates. In this 3D world, developers and users can interact with each other. First of all, users have to create an individual character with which they can move online. After that you can enter one of the worlds built by developers with this character. You can also purchase your own land in the Cardano Metaverse via the marketplaces in Cardalonia . This is secured by Cardano's blockchain technology and therefore offers a relatively secure transfer of ownership. Since these are only digital plots of land, it is not yet entirely clear when the plots of land are purchased whether they can also be sold again in the future. A possible profit cannot be estimated at the moment. In Cardalonia, the cryptocurrency Lonia is used. The maximum amount of tokens in circulation is 100,000,000. The team consists of Alice Sand (Co-Founder), Vasil Air (CTO) and Dustan Water (Fullstack Developer). T...

Cardano: This is the vision that founder Charles Hoskinson has

  The Altcoin Cardano has tended to decline in recent weeks.  The Alonzo upgrade was supposed to bring improvements, but it soon turned out to be a disappointment.  Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson presented his vision for the cyber motto in a live Twitter video. • Cardano in the last few months under pressure • Charles Hoskinson explains his Cardano vision via Twitter • Security and privacy at the center The cryptocurrency  Cardano  has had a difficult few months.  While founder Charles Hoskinson's cyber motto has had a strong run in 2021, it has been steadily downhill in recent months.  Cardano is faced with some difficulties.  The so-called Alonzo upgrade went live in mid-September, for which crypto fans had high hopes, but which soon turned out to be a disappointment.  The upgrade should make it possible to use smart contracts on the cryptocurrency as well.  It soon turned out, however, that although these were entered into Cardano,...