The user friendliness of cryptocurrency is bound to fall more drastically with the alarming revelations made my BleepingComputer this week; they detected a sample of clipboard hijacker malware that is monitoring over 2.3 million bitcoin addresses.
Despite of being far beyond the comfort zone of its users, Bitcoin has been steadily rising through the ranks of popularity since 2009 and what remained unchanged over the years is a major part of the technology that transacts the coins, it still requires the usage of long bitcoin addresses which are beyond the memorizing capacity of average humans.
Therefore, users developed a habit of simply copy- pasting the addresses while transacting cryptocurrencies.
The downfalls of this habitual practice of copy pasting led hackers into creating a computer malware namely cryptocurrency clipboard hijacker, which however, is not a first of its kind.
The previous samples of clipboard hijacker were functioned to monitor between 400,000 and 600,000 addresses at a time. But now risen is the status, both of the numbers and the threat.
As per the reports, the malware is identified as a part of the All-Radio 4.27 Portable malware, which affects Windows computers, monitoring the Windows clipboard for a bitcoin address.
If the users do not confirm the address by double checking after pasting it, the bitcoin will be ensnared and will go to the hackers’ address instead of the one intended.
Measures to adopt for protection against cryptocurrency clipboard hijacker:
Reportedly, the malware runs in the background, giving no hints of its vicious presence which in turn makes it hard to even detect the infection before the damage is done.
As a defense mechanism, IT experts advise users against using outdated operating systems. To have the upper hand over this malicious software, they are advised to have their operating system and antivirus programme updated.
Users shall not forget to double-check the address by any means in order to ensure no replacement in the address and to prevent their bitcoins from being stolen.
