The cryptocurrency market entered the new week with impressive price growth when on February 8 most coins experienced a price upsurge that raised the total market cap for $10 billion.
After the spike that happened last Friday, Bitcoin went up 6.5 percent. Ethereum's 19 percent growth, on the other hand, returned the altcoin its second place as the largest cryptocurrency according to market cap.
Litecoin was leading the market surge, with its impressive 44 percent growth over the week. The coin reached a three month high of $47.
The cryptocurrency market plunge did not last long, however. Over the last 24 hours, most coins are in the red and are experiencing mild loses.
At press time, Bitcoin is trading above $3,600, and the total market cap slipped back to $120 billion.
617 Million Hacked Accounts for Sale on Dream Market
Stolen data from 617 million accounts from various websites is currently offered for sale on the dark web in exchange for Bitcoins.
The vendor is selling the information on Dream Market, one of the top darknet marketplaces, under the name of Gnosticplayers.
The prices of the listings differ in value, going up to .549 BTC (or $1,959 USD) as the most expensive one.
The Register revealed the news about the data breach earlier this week, and the listings were later confirmed.
According to their article, the listings contain information such as usernames, email addresses and passwords.
Depending on the breached website, some of the data also includes personal details and locations of the victims.
Credit card credentials or other means of payment were not yet noticed in the listings.
The vendor acquired users' data from a total of 16 websites, allegedly over a period of three years, with one of the breaches dating back to 2016.
While some of the data breaches were already publicly addressed, such as those of MyFitnessPal or the MyHeritage platform, some were not disclosed until the news surfaced this Monday.
The most extensive amount of data was taken from Dubsmash, a video messaging phone app released just four years ago, with 162 million user accounts.
Over 150 million MyFitnessPal users were compromised by the breach that happened in early 2018, while the third largest hacked database was from MyHeritage with 92 million accounts.
Other compromised websites include 8Fit, Animoto, Bookmate, DataCamp and Whitepages.
The vendor told The Register that at least one purchase was made on the Dubsmash data. This means someone got a hold on the personal information of 162 million people around the world.
In total, the 617 million hacked accounts are being sold for less than $20,000 in Bitcoin.
Hamas Receives Bitcoin Donations Through Coinbase
Palestinian military-political organization Hamas has been collecting donations in the form of Bitcoins through one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, a militant wing of the Hamas group which has been deemed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, earlier this year announced that they will get crowdfunded with Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency donations are supposed to support them to facilitate their military activities.
Whitestream, an Israeli blockchain Intelligence Company, trailed several cryptocurrency wallets that point to a Hamas channel requesting for Bitcoin donations.
The wallets reportedly included Coinbase and Binance accounts.
It appears as if Hamas is steadily turning towards the dark web and cryptocurrencies because they are hard to trace.
However, according to Whitestream, there is no room for concern because the total turnover of Bitcoin that involves terrorism or the dark web is no more than 2 percent.
On the other hand, following these events, Israeli NGO Shurat Hadin Law Center has threatened Coinbase with a lawsuit if they don't put an end to this situation.
According to them, Coinbase is violating the U.S. federal criminal law, based on the fact that their headquarters are located within the U.S., a country where Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization.
They demand from Coinbase to immediately terminate the Hamas accounts.
False Image Scams Targeting Crypto Exchanges
Scammers nowadays use all sorts of approaches when it comes to stealing cryptocurrencies, from malware to false websites and platforms. However, now they have taken a slightly different approach.
Consulting firm Hold Security revealed that cryptocurrency scammers are using doctored photographs to deceive the two-factor authentication systems of cryptocurrency exchanges.
The idea behind this scam is to trick the cryptocurrency exchange into thinking that the real owner of the account is trying to reset the two-factor authentication, which is needed in order to gain access to the account.
They buy the photographs from darknet markets for low prices that go up to $50 for one image.
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That's it for our summary of this week's major crypto news headlines. This is the 33rd post in our crypto news series. Catch up on the latest installments here:
