These mass Internet scanning campaigns have been recently picked up by various honeypots installed by security researchers across the Internet. A honeypot is an Internet-attached server that lures potential hackers in order to study their activities and monitor how they are able to break into a system.
With both Bitcoin and Ethereum price hitting all-time highs in the past week, fraudsters continue to scan the Internet for Bitcoin wallet archives accidentally left online. Access to such archives will allow them access to the victims’ funds. There have been Bitcoin scans in the past as well, but now is the first time researchers spot so many. However, with the Ether, the scanning for Ethereum wallet clients started in November 2017.
Earlier this month, researcher Dimitrios Slamaris told Bleeping Computer that he tracked one campaign during which one fraudster appears to have been successful in stealing 8 Ethers (around USD 3,200 today) from some accounts.
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