A malicious malware trojan has stolen at least $160,000 in Bitcoin from unsuspecting people trying to transfer their crypto.
The CryptoShuffler trojan works by manipulating your computer’s copy-and-paste clipboard. When you copy the address you are trying to send your currency to, the malware replaces the address you copied with an address that will send your currency directly into the hacker’s pockets.
To make matters worse, the trojan doesn’t just target Bitcoin transactions. It’s also stealing other coins, including ZCash, Dogecoin, Monero, Dash and Ethereum.
Fortunately, there are a few simple things you can do to make sure you’re not a victim of this type of malware bait-and-switch:
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- Always double check the address you’re sending your cryptocurrency to after you paste into your wallet. Make sure the address you pasted in is the same exact one you’re intending to use.
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- Rely on smart malware prevention software to keep your computer clean. Malwarebytes is the gold standard and works on both Mac and Windows.
- If you want to take it to the next level, you can buy a Google Chromebook. The ChromeOS operating system is so simple that it’s not even possible to run executable files on it, which means malware can’t live on the platform. In fact, Google has offered $100,000 to anyone who can hack ChromeOS, and to our knowledge no one has been able to do so.
This isn’t the first time this type of malware has successfully stolen crypto and it probably won’t be the last. Always take measures to protect your investments.
