Bithumb, led by CEO Lee Jae-won, announced Friday it has released a guide to help users protect themselves against impersonation phishing scams.
The move comes amid a rise in harm caused by fraudulent text messages, emails and fake websites impersonating cryptocurrency exchanges and financial institutions, with the company urging users to exercise caution.
Recent impersonation phishing attacks have grown increasingly sophisticated, using sender names that closely mimic legitimate organizations, URLs that are difficult to distinguish from official sites, and carefully crafted instructional text. If a user clicks a fake link or enters information on a cloned site, their account credentials, authentication details and personal data can all be compromised at once.
Bithumb identified three main phishing methods. The first involves sending text messages impersonating an exchange or financial institution — warning of a "detected login attempt from an overseas IP address," for example — and directing users to click a fraudulent link. A second uses emails disguised as security checks to redirect users to pages that closely replicate the real site. A third exploits search engines by surfacing fake websites, tricking users into entering their information directly.
kyoung@heraldcorp.com
