Phishing attacks have proven to be rather lucrative in the world of cryptocurrency over the past few years. We have seen criminals rely on this method for quite some time now, often resulting in major financial losses for victims. It seems there is a new phishing site on the block related to the MyMonero wallet. Spotting the difference in this fake listing is rather difficult, to say the very least.
Beware the Fake MyMonero website
When it comes to Monero wallets, a lot of people trust MyMonero. That is not surprising by any means, as it is run by one of the main Monero developers himself. The popularity of this online service has also attracted the attention of criminals, unfortunately. More specifically, it seems there is a new phishing site trying to trick MyMonero users into giving up access to their money.
It is pretty difficult to spot the fake site, though. It shows up in Google Search results as a sponsored advertisement, but even that URL almost appears to be perfectly legitimate. When looking closely at the URL, though, it becomes evident this site uses a different sort of letter “r” in its name, which can seemingly be used to register phishing site domain names right now. That’s rather disturbing, to say the very least.
WARNING ⚠️
Mymonero wallet phishing – notice small dot under the "r" in the domain name
Please don't click ads when you go web wallet! pic.twitter.com/JLgN4qcQE4
— Crypto Fish ? (@coinyeezy) October 17, 2017
This is the first time we’ve seen a Google Search ad for a phishing site which has almost the identical URL to the real platform. There are no added or removed letters in this regard, nor does it use a different domain extension whatsoever. The unusual “r” raises a lot of questions, though, as registering a domain using such special characters should not be allowed whatsoever. Indeed, it is almost a guarantee of creating proper phishing sites and needs to be addressed.
Sadly, this is not the first time we’ve seen phishing sites like this one make it to the Google ads results either. Virtually all major cryptocurrency-related phishing sites have something to do with Google search results these days, which is a pretty worrisome trend, to say the very least. Most ad blockers will successfully prevent such sites from being visible in the search engine, though, but not everyone uses this type of software.
All of this goes to show that the Monero cryptocurrency has been of keen interest to criminals as of late. Otherwise, they would not resort to such measures as a way to launch phishing sites in the first place. Online wallet services will always remain a problem in the world of cryptocurrency, especially from a security vantage point. It will be interesting to see how and when Google removes this listing.
It is unclear whether this phishing site has had any impact on Monero users to date. We can only hope no one has fallen for this phishing attempt and lost good money in the process. Cryptocurrency users are smartening up when it comes to Google search results related to cryptocurrency. More often than not, these are phishing sites or other types of scams. It is evident something will need to change in this regard sooner or later.
