The post Cybercrime on the Rise: 2024 Mid-Year Crypto Crime Report Highlights appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Terrill Dicki Aug 16, 2024 07:56 Chainalysis reports a 20% drop in overall crypto crime in 2024, but stolen funds and ransomware incidents are surging. According to a recent report by Chainalysis, while overall illicit on-chain activity in the cryptocurrency space has decreased by nearly 20% year-to-date (YTD), specific categories such as stolen funds and ransomware incidents are on the rise. Key Findings The report highlights that the aggregate illicit activity on-chain has dropped significantly, suggesting that legitimate activity is growing more rapidly than illicit activity. However, inflows of stolen funds have nearly doubled, increasing from $857 million to $1.58 billion. Ransomware inflows have also risen by approximately 2%, from $449.1 million to $459.8 million. Stolen Funds The average amount of cryptocurrency stolen per heist has surged by almost 80%. This increase is partly due to the rise in the price of Bitcoin (BTC), which accounted for 40% of the total transaction volume associated with these heists. Crypto thieves are increasingly targeting centralized exchanges over DeFi protocols, which are less popular for trading BTC. Advanced cybercriminals, including those linked to North Korea, are using off-chain methods like social engineering to infiltrate crypto-related services. Ransomware 2024 is on track to become the highest-grossing year for ransomware payments. The year has already seen the largest ransomware payment ever recorded at approximately $75 million to the Dark Angels ransomware group. The median ransom payment for severe ransomware strains has spiked from under $200,000 in early 2023 to $1.5 million in mid-June 2024. This suggests that these strains are targeting larger businesses and critical infrastructure providers that are more likely to pay high ransoms. The ransomware ecosystem has fragmented due to law enforcement disruptions of major players like ALPHV/BlackCat and LockBit. Affiliates have migrated to less effective strains or launched their own, contributing to…

---

Filed under: News - @ August 17, 2024 12:10 am