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Top AlphaBay Phisher Made over $1 Million Due to Vulnerability

Last Updated April 27, 2023 8:04 AM
Francisco Memoria
Last Updated April 27, 2023 8:04 AM

Popular darknet market AlphaBay recently went down and while reporting on it, CCN.com advised users to watch out for phishing scams that could lead to hackers taking their bitcoins. Now it’s known that AlphaBay has been taken down by law enforcement, and a prominent phisher known as Phishkingz decided to do an interview with DeepDotWeb , about how he made over $1 million while taking advantage of new users.

In the interview, Phishkingz claims to be a well-known vendor on AlphaBay, but decided only to reveal the phishing side of his business. He started tricking people due to an error on AlphaBay’s forums, that allowed him to see new members as soon as they joined. Using this information, he then sent them a link to a made-up verification page.

Users were tricked into clicking the link through the promise of faster access to support in case of a dispute. Using this method, Phishkingz was reportedly “able to obtain the login details syncing, and the mnemonic phrases, as well as any PGP private key and password and pin code” of its victims.

Then, to guarantee he was able to withdraw deposited bitcoins as fast as possible, Phishkingz would bookmark address links from blockchain.info. Initially, he even experimented with a bot to automate the process, but gave up on it because of the required maintenance.

According to the interview, Phishkingz traded “about 500 BTC” on peer-to-peer exchange LocalBitcoins, which amounts to over $1 million earned by phishing people on AlphaBay. His operation got so big, he stated that at one point he had 27 people working for him.

Moving from AlphaBay to Dream Market

Now that AlphaBay is gone for good, Phishkingz says he has moved on to Dream Market, and claims to have already earned 4 BTC on the new platform. Apart from AlphaBay and Dream Market, he never phished anywhere else.

When asked about AlphaBay admins, he claims they did try to stop him, but to no avail. Moreover, he stated that admins didn’t care about their customers and that one would even give him access to accounts for 50% of the loot.

“The admins didn’t really care about their customers, and it only took opening a support ticket with a problem to learn this.”

At the end of the day, Phishkingz claims he feels bad for the people who he steals money from but, at the same time, believes he is teaching them a lesson and that they should be happy he is a phisher looking for their bitcoins, and not a law enforcement officer.

AlphaBay’s security flaws allowed the hacker to make a lot of money, and the whole interview serves as a reminder that bad actors are out there. As recently reported by CCN.com, more and more ICOs have been getting hacked lately, including CoinDash’s ICO.

Featured image from Shutterstock.