The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warns that scammers and bad actors are increasingly target cryptocurrency ATMs and QR codes to facilitate payment. The agency said in an official notice that QR codes have become a favorite tool for fraudulent activities.
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"Criminal actors, in various fraudulent schemes, maliciously leverage cryptocurrency ATMs and QR codes to receive payments from victims," the watchdog says.
According to the FBI, fraudsters are posing themselves as representatives of the government, law enforcement, or a legal office. They also establish an online relationship with a victim by creating a "false sense of intimacy and dependency." The agency emphasizes that cryptocurrency payments are generally difficult to recover, which differs this type of scam from the one involving traditional bank transfers.
In September, Kraken Security Labs, the cybersecurity department of the Kraken exchange, revealed multiple hardware and software vulnerabilities in a popular bitcoin ATM — The General Bytes BATMtwo (GBBATM2). The experts found that the machine is vulnerable to multiple attacks through the default administrative QR code only.
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