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.
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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.