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A deep web hacker operating under the pseudonym of ‘Phishkingz’ has recently claimed to have generated over $1 million from phishing Alphabay accounts during the last 14 months. In a recent interview with Deepdotweb, Phishkingz details the methods that he uses when stealing bitcoins.

Also Read: Law Enforcement Takes Down the Biggest Darknet Market on the Deep Web

Phishkingz Claims to Have Sold 500 Stolen Bitcoins in the Last 14 Months

Darknet phisher, Phishkingz, recently discussed methods that he claims allowed him to generate over $1 million in 12 months by stealing bitcoins. Phishkingz claims to have traded approximately 500 bitcoin on Localbitcoins in the last 14 months, the entirety of which was generated through phishing.

Phishkingz states that he is also a dark market vendor. His decision to start phishing to steal bitcoins was made following the discovery of an error on Alphabay’s forums “that allowed [Phishkingz] to see new members the second they joined.” The hacker would then directly contact new members, “send[ing[ them to my link with a verification process.” From them, Phishkingz is “able to obtain the login details syncing, and the mnemonic phrases, as well as any PGP private key and password and pin code.”

The hacker would then “save a bookmark using blockchain.info… [and] highlight 50 [addresses] at a time every 20 minutes checking for deposits”. The majority of the withdrawals would be processed manually, despite early experimentation with bots. Phishkingz claims that his operations expanded to a scale that required the assistance of employees, stating that at one point he “had 27 people working… running phishers” that were stealing bitcoins for him.

The Admins Didn’t Really Care About Their Customers

Phishkingz describes Alphabay’s moderators as providing little support to his victims. “The admins didn’t really care about their customers, and it only took opening a support ticket with a problem to learn this. BM (Big Muscles – an Alphabay moderator) especially is a stupid one. He would let me into accounts for 50% if I provided mnemonic phrase knowing I had phished the account in the first place.”

Following the recent removal of Alphabay, the bitcoin hacker claims to “have moved to Dream Market and already made 4 BTC since yesterday launching the new site.”

The number of phishers attempting to hack bitcoins outside of the deep web has also recently proliferated. The record breaking Tezos ICO has attracted the attention of phishers, seeing clone sites being hosted for the purposes of stealing bitcoins. Other creative hackers have recently started setting up websites for fake ICOs, infecting victims’ computers through downloading malicious software disguised as project whitepapers. With bitcoin and altcoins seeing unprecedented media exposure, a growing presence of bitcoin hackers and scammers operating in all corners of the internet appears to be an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of greater cryptocurrency adoption.

Have you ever fallen victim to a phishing scam? Share your story in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Wikipedia

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