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The increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies has turned social media into a central place where users look for help when they have problems with their crypto wallet or private key. Scammers take advantage of this situation to make money with fake support offerings or to gain access to wallets or keys.

CISPA researcher Dr. Bhupendra Acharya has presented the first large-scale study on how these scams work and provided an end-to-end analysis of the scam operations in X (formerly known as Twitter). He presented his findings at the 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May 2024. The paper is available on the arXiv preprint server.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum are widely gaining acceptance because of their decentralized nature and because they grant anonymity to their users. In order to manage and sell cryptocurrencies, users need so-called crypto wallets, which basically are digital wallets for cryptocurrencies.

The best-known wallets are Metamask, Coinbase and Trust. In order to access these wallets, secret keys are required. Anyone with access to the secret keys can manage or access the crypto wallets. In the event of secret key loss, the crypto wallets remain inaccessible.

"We noticed that, as cryptocurrencies have become more popular, people have also been talking about them on social media. This also includes technical support issues such as wallet inaccess, loss of private key phrases, etc., which attracts fraudsters who fake technical support, effectively impersonating official support," explains Acharya.

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