BlackBerry Thwarts 1.5 Million Cyber Attacks in Two Months, Report Indicates Crypto Sector Vulnerable to Fraudsters

Blackberry has identified multiple families of malware that are being utilized to execute extensive campaigns aimed at stealing cryptocurrency from devices.

In the August edition of ‘The BlackBerry Global Threat Intelligence Report,’ the former leader in the smartphone sector discovered that the finance, healthcare, and government sectors are the three industries most affected by cyberattacks.

Malware Ubiquity

Between March 2023 and May 2023, BlackBerry’s cybersecurity solutions successfully prevented over 1.5 million attacks, during which the crypto sector was recognized as particularly vulnerable to fraudsters targeting unsuspecting individuals. The attackers are broadening their arsenal of tools to bypass security measures, especially focusing on outdated solutions that depend on signatures and hashes.

BlackBerry’s telemetry has noted a continuing trend in the use of commodity malware such as ‘RedLine,’ which can extract a variety of sensitive information, including saved credentials, credit card information, and cryptocurrency data.

‘SmokeLoader’ is among the most notable malware families that has consistently appeared in the threat landscape.

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Since its initial emergence in 2011, SmokeLoader has gained significant popularity. Initially linked to Russian-based threat actors until 2014, it has been used to disseminate various types of malware, including ransomware, infostealers, crypto miners, and banking Trojans.

Spam emails, malicious documents, and spearphishing attacks are some of the methods through which SmokeLoader is delivered to victims.

Once it breaches a victim’s system, SmokeLoader implements a persistence mechanism to endure reboots, utilizes DLL injection to disguise itself within legitimate processes, performs host enumeration, and downloads/installs additional files or malware to further its harmful activities.

RaccoonStealer, classified as an infostealer, is engineered to gather browser cookies, passwords, auto-fill web browser data, and cryptocurrency wallet information. This malware has gained infamy for being marketed as Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) on dark web forums and similar sites.

Targets

Linux operating systems are prime targets for threat actors, who seek to exploit computer resources for cryptocurrency mining, particularly focusing on the privacy-centric crypto asset, Monero.

At the same time, macOS users are now encountering a new risk in the form of an infostealer named Atomic macOS, which is specifically crafted to gather credentials from keychains, browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive information on macOS devices.

BlackBerry reported that the highest number of thwarted attacks occurred in the United States. During the reporting period, the company observed a significant increase in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, with South Korea and Japan now ranking among its top three. Additionally, New Zealand and Hong Kong have made notable advancements, achieving positions within the top 10 for attack prevention.

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