Phishing sites are nothing new in the Bitcoin world. Over the past few years, numerous fictitious Blockchain.info, Bitstamp, and Shapeshift websites have popped up. But it looks like internet criminals are shifting their attention to Ethereum right now, by creating malicious ads in Google for the MyEtherWallet service.
It was only a matter of time until Internet criminals would attempt to trick Ethereum users into visiting malicious websites. Any form of financial service or product that gains traction becomes subject to attention from internet criminals and hackers at some point. Keeping in mind how cryptocurrency is both lucrative and non-refundable, it is a prime target for malicious attacks.
For Ethereum users, the MyEtherWallet service is being targeted by internet criminals right now. When entering this search term in the Google search engine, users will be presented with two results. The first one, which is a sponsored advertisement, is not the real wallet service. Users who click this link and use it to store funds will lose their ETH balance.
Reporting this malicious website to Google is the only thing users can do right now. It is not the first time the world’s biggest search engine has to deal with these types of advertisement issues. The Bitcoin ecosystem has seen several fake wallet and exchange links being advertised on Google, each of which had to be taken down manually by the company.
It is not overly difficult to distinguish the real MyEtherWallet from the fake version, though. First of all, the legitimate site uses SSL encryption through the HTTPS protocol, whereas all other fake domains do not. Moreover, the fake websites all lead to different addresses, such as MyEtherWalet, or MyEthersWallet. Subtle difference, but rather easy to spot by anyone who is paying attention to what they are doing.
This debacle is causing an interesting discussion in the Ethereum community right now. Many users feel the time has come for MyEtherWallet to turn into a standalone application instead of a web service. The developer has
confirmed an Android release will come first in November or December of this year. The iOS version will follow at a future date.Image credit 1
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