Fraudulent schemes have scammed at least $11 million in Bitcoin deposits from unsuspecting cyber customers over the past four years, according to new cyber security research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Bitcoin is the digital world's most popular virtual currency, with millions in circulation.
In the first empirical study of its kind, SMU researchers found that hucksters used four different types of schemes through authentic-looking web-based investment and banking outlets to lure customers and heist deposits, said computer security expert Marie Vasek, lead researcher on the study.
"Our calculation of $11 million is almost certainly at the low-end," said Vasek. "The amount of Bitcoin that depositors have lost to these scams is probably many millions more."
Typically the scams succeed by exploiting not only people's greed, but also the urge to "get rich quick," coupled with the inability to judge the legitimacy of web services to decide which financial sites are good or bad, said Bitcoin and cyber security expert Tyler W. Moore, co-researcher on the study.
"Because the complete history of Bitcoin transactions are made public, we have been able to inspect, for the first time, the money flowing in and out of fraudulent schemes in great detail. It's like having access to all of Bernie Madoff's books for many of these scams," said Moore, director of the Economics and Social Sciences program of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security in SMU's Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.
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