Study: Bitcoin Becoming Less Attractive Target for Trojan Malware

A new report from security firm Symantec claims that the number of Trojan malware programs targeting bitcoin users has fallen in the past year.

Mar 5, 2015 at 9:25 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 11, 2021 at 11:35 a.m. UTC

A new report from security firm Symantec claims the number of Trojan malware programs targeting bitcoin users has fallen in the past year.

The conclusion was included in a report published on 3rd March entitled "The State of Financial Trojans 2014". The drop reflected an overall decline in the proliferation of financial Trojans, which Symantec said slid by 53% in 2014.

Specific attack types, the report noted, include methods by which a bitcoin addresses is changed prior to a transaction without the user's knowledge.

However, the firm acknowledged that it doesn't know why the number of bitcoin-focused Trojans has seemingly fallen:

"We can only speculate on the reasons why the attackers did not adapt more to target cryptocurrencies. Perhaps cryptocurrency’s usage is still too low to be attractive for the scammers or the attackers are still making enough profits with their other targets and don’t want to change their plans to include cryptocurrencies yet."

Other studies

have found that as much as one-fifth of financial malware attacks in 2014 targeted holders of bitcoin.

The Symantec report did not focus on attacks utilizing ransomware, though the firm has touched on the subject in the past. Late last year, another study found that nearly all targets of bitcoin ransomware refuse to pay.

Image via Shutterstock

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