60% Of Cryptocurrency Hacks Were Carried Out By Two Groups, Says New Report

Gone are those good old days when all you needed to worry about was catching some kid in his bedroom, glued to his computer screen, trying to hack into your system. The stereotype of high school nerds hacking into computers to test their ‘wild side’ is a myth now. Hacking today is almost like organized crime, carefully planned out and extremely methodical in its approach.

We had earlier reported that Chainalysis claimed that ‘2018 Saw Ethereum Scammers Double Their Profits‘. A new report from the blockchain analysis firm claims that 60% of the hacks that have taken place, have two prominent groups behind them. They together are responsible for 60%of these hacks. The professional groups have been named Alpha and Beta by the firm.

This compels us to infer, that hacking isn’t a solitary affair or a one time crime anymore, it is taking the shape of organized crime. There is an entire racket behind this sort of hacking which is plalnning to make some serious money by way of cryptocurrency scams. These hackers have strategic plans and understandably, resources to carry out such hacks on a big scale.

According to the network, the Alpha group is the more sinister one which has bigger plans than just making money via these hacks. Although the report does not go into details abut what these ulterior motives might be, it is not hard to imagine the group planning to finance terrorism, or experiment with the dark web with the crypto that they steal. The Beta group on other hand is just in it for their pesonal gains.

You must be wondering right about now, how have these groups not yet been caught? Well that’s because much like in ‘organized crime’, these groups know how it cover their tracks. They go to large lengths to make sure that the crime cannot be traced back to them. They uses tactics such as crypto dusting and crypto mixing to ensure that the authorties cannot get to them. The money they steal is also laundered carefully, so as to not raise any alarms when used.

This news is understandably distressing for the industry as a whole which is grappling with the problem of hacking. We just have to wait and see if the problem gets any worse, because if it does, we need some serious reform.