Singapore’s police force has issued a warning about a new variant of a phishing scam that involves hackers taking over a victim’s WhatsApp account and contacts.
The scam lures victims into connecting their WhatsApp account to a fake phishing website via a QR code, secretly granting access to the website owner.
Phishing scams are widespread across the cryptocurrency sector, as it’s easy for hackers to transfer funds under a veil of anonymity. It was reported last week that users of LastPass, a platform that encrypts and stores passwords, lost $4.4 million in a single day after the software’s cloud platform was breached last year.
Another reason why cryptocurrency users are targeted is because transactions are irreversible, meaning that once hackers secure access to a user’s private key, it is almost impossible to recover the assets in that wallet.
Yahoo Finance reported that Singaporean actress Aileen Tan was targeted by the WhatsApp scam. Hackers used her credentials to ask her husband to transfer money to a bank account in Hong Kong. A report by StraitsTimes reveals how one WhatsApp user sent $3,500 to a friend’s compromised account.