Ledger crypto wallet users have reported suspicious phone calls that ostensibly originate from all across Europe.
Owners of Ledger hardware wallets have been receiving dozens of Phishing phone calls after the manufacturer’s database has been dumped on the hacker sites, confessed Bitcoin advocate and tech entrepreneur Andreas Antonopoulos recently.
As it has been reported in late December, millions of customer emails have been stolen from Ledger and made publicly available on the hacker site. Right after the hack, some Ledger owners began receiving threatening Bitcoin ransom emails. But it seems like malicious actors have decided to take a step further and resorted to actual phone calls.
“This is a new and more high-touch high-effort attack which is similar to the ‘Windows tech support’ scams that are run out of call centers in low-labor-cost countries,” Antonopoulos tweeted, continuing, “While I had previously heard about social engineering attacks via email and SMS, I had not heard about these voice calls. It appears many have been receiving them for weeks.”
Pascal Gauthier, Ledger’s CEO, stated after the hack that users who have their addresses leaked should not need to move house for scammers were more possible to run lower-cost phishing attacks, like spoof emails or threatening messages. He also stated that the firm won’t be providing any compensation to those who had their data leaked.
After letting other Ledger users report the same suspicious calls, Antonopoulos later revealed that he received information about dozens of such interactions, with calls that seemed to originate from all over Europe.
“I can only confirm. Several calls every day since the 8th of January. First mostly from Sweden, wanted to help to invest in crypto (‘we help you buy when cheap, and sell when expensive’ :)) ) last two days calls from Austria, and one other which I don’t remember,” tweeted Wojciech Krawczyk.
While many users ignore calls from unknown numbers, some are even going so far as to switch to a new phone number – but it is not a magic bullet against scammers, Antonopoulos advised.
“This is a double-edged sword—if you switch numbers, your old number is available and might be hijacked to impersonate you. You must make ABSOLUTELY SURE you have removed it from everywhere before you switch,” he wrote.
This is an idea that the scammer can take ownership of the old number and then use that to pass two-factor authentication that relied on the mobile number – which is an easy way to lose money.
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