Security News > 2021 > June > Cybercriminals Hold $115,000-Prize Contest to Find New Cryptocurrency Hacks

A top Russian-language underground forum has been running a "Contest" for the past month, calling on its community to submit "Unorthodox" ways to conduct cryptocurrency attacks.

The forum's administrator, in an announcement made on April 20, 2021, invited members to submit papers that assess the possibility of targeting cryptocurrency-related technology, including the theft of private keys and wallets, in addition to covering unusual cryptocurrency mining software, smart contracts, and non-fungible tokens.

"So far, the top candidates include topics like generating a fake blockchain front-end website that captures sensitive information such as private keys and balances, creating a new cryptocurrency blockchain from scratch, increasing the hash rate speed of mining farms and botnets, and demonstrating a custom tool that parses logs for cryptocurrency artifacts from victim machines," said Michael DeBolt, Intel 471's Senior Vice President of Global Intelligence, in an email interview with The Hacker News.

Other entries looked at manipulating APIs from popular cryptocurrency-related services or decentralized-file technology to obtain private keys to cryptocurrency wallets as well as creating a phishing website that allowed criminals to harvest keys to cryptocurrency wallets and their seed phrases.

Given the crucial role played by underground marketplaces like Hydra in enabling cybercrime groups to cash out their cryptocurrency haul, it's plausible that methods that permit Ransomware-as-a-Service operators to step up pressure on victims and force them to give into their ransom demands could gain traction.

"The biggest takeaway from the adversary side is that this type of incentivized knowledge-sharing bolsters the already interconnected and interdependent cybercrime underground by consolidating illicit resources in one place and making it easier for like-minded criminals who want to pursue cryptocurrency hacks by giving them a platform to collaborate, discuss and share ideas," DeBolt said.

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