This is how you can protect your cryptocurrencies from hackers
Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, added about 1.9 million new users in the last two months. In the same period, Blockchain.com, the leading digital wallet to store cryptocurrencies, saw its users grow just slightly less than that.
Many are newcomers, unaware of the risks and security holes in the complicated yet lucrative world of cryptocurrency, making them easy prey for hackers and cyberthiefs.
One common crime that’s carried out on cryptocurrency investors is the phone-porting attack. Hackers snoop around social media, looking for cryptocurrency conversations in which investors post their phone and email for easy contact. Then, posing as the victim, they call up the phone provider in an attempt to fool the customer service representative into transferring the phone number to a device they control.
Once the hackers take over the phone number, they can go into the victim’s cryptocurrency exchange account by resetting the password, ultimately stealing cryptocurrencies from the account. Cody Brown, a virtual reality developer, blogged about how he lost around $8,000 worth of cryptocurrencies on Coinbase in 15 minutes, triggered by a phone porting attack on his phone account.
A few suggestions to minimize loss from hacking:
Don’t keep all your cryptocurrency investments in one place. Diversify among exchanges.
Keep your cryptocurrency off the internet, in a “cold wallet.” “Cold wallet” is a concept of storing bitcoins offline (not connected to internet) so that it reduces the opportunities for hackers to steal via online techniques.
Store your tokens on a hardware wallet, which is a hardware device.