Many of us have different wallets and we sometimes copy it and than paste it in mining programs or other places where we want to transact cryptocurrencies. A danger to this simple activity (copy/paste which goes through Windows clipboard) has been brought by hackers which create a malware covering over 2.3 million cryptocurrency wallets and which just replaces those addresses with hacked ones of their own.
By not paying attention you could simply want to paste your address (for example 3BYpmdzASG7S6WrpmrnzJCX3y8kduF6Kmc) and the malware would replace it in the Windows clipboard with one of their own. Having in mind that all this happens in the clipboard, most of use wouldn’t notice the differences between copying and pasting. Security specialists at BleepingComputer identified similar hackers out there, but this latest version is actively following big wallets and trying snapping bitcoin as they get into the accounts. We can see such a malware in action...
The malware resided in a big ~83MB library (DLL) that is hidden as a Direct X service. Within the library there is a 2.5 million line text file that covers a wide range of bitcoin addressed. Previous movie shows that when cutting and pasting from an web page into WordPad you’ll observe that the addresses are fine change in each case while leaving the initial sequence of the address the same.
As a response to this malware there are many anti-virus programs which marked this library as dangerous and you should be fine while you keep the antivirus program updated. But, nevertheless, as also BleepingComputer tries to bring awareness on this - the safest way to guard your bitcoins is to attentively check each address you copy and paste:
"As malware like this runs in the background with no indication that it is even running, is it not easy to spot that you are infected. Therefore it is important to always have a updated antivirus solution installed to protect you from these types of threats.
It is also very important that all cryptocurrency users to double-check any addresses that they are sending cryptocoins to before they actually send them. This way you can spot whether an address has been replaced with a different one than is intended."
This kinda resumes it all :))
Interesting ways people find to steal, it never ceases to amaze me.
As simple as can be, never thought that COPY - PASTE can bring you such a WASTE! But, today's hackers think on the user most common behavior and that is what does the most damage of it all.
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