AMLBot Says Social Engineering Drove 65% of Crypto Incidents in 2025
The post AMLBot Says Social Engineering Drove 65% of Crypto Incidents in 2025 appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
About two-thirds of crypto incidents investigated by blockchain analytics company AMLBot in 2025 were driven by social engineering rather than technical exploits, according to a report based on the company’s internal casework. AMLBot said 65% of the incidents it reviewed last year involved access and response failures, such as compromised devices, weak verification and delayed detection, instead of vulnerabilities in blockchains or smart contracts. The company said its analysis drew on about 2,500 internal investigations and should not be read as an industry-wide measure of crypto crime, according to a Wednesday report shared with Cointelegraph. Primary attack vectors included device compromises via chat scams, impersonation scams, and other investment and phishing scams involving social manipulation. Crypto phishing attacks are social engineering schemes that don’t require hacking code. Instead, attackers share fraudulent links to steal victims’ sensitive information, such as the private keys to crypto wallets. The findings suggest that security improvements at the protocol level may not be enough to protect users if scammers can bypass safeguards by targeting people directly. Percentage of crypto theft cases by fraud category. Source: AMLBot Investment scams and phishing lead by case count Investment scams accounted for the largest share of cases (25%), followed by phishing attacks (18%) and device compromises (13%), as the most damaging categories in terms of case frequency. Related: 22 Bitcoin worth $1.5M vanish from Seoul police custody Pig-butchering scams accounted for 8%, over-the-counter (OTC) fraud for 8%, and chat-based impersonation represented 7%, collectively making up the second tier of the most frequent attacks. Percentage of crypto theft cases per month. Source: AMLBot Impersonation linked to $9 million in recent losses AMLBot traced at least $9 million in stolen digital assets to impersonation-related attacks over the past three months. Impersonation is the most damaging attack vector in terms of social engineering…
Filed under: News - @ February 19, 2026 5:28 am