NEW YORK — Two hacker groups are responsible for a majority of the cybercrime carried out against cryptocurrency exchanges, alleges a new report. Combined, the two groups have stolen roughly $1 billion in cryptocurrency. <br />According to Bitcoin.com, digital surveillance company Chainalysis identified two groups behind many of the hacks in the field in its latest "crypto crime" report.<br />Analysts say on average, each hack from either of the two groups involved around $90 million per incident. <br />Chainalysis says the first hacking group is a "giant, tightly controlled organization" that could be driven in part by non-monetary goals. The second group is smaller, less organized and more brazen, but primarily focused on money. <br />According to the report, at least 50 percent of stolen cryptocurrency were converted into hard currency through some type of conversion service within 112 days of the hacks. <br />Chainalysis said 64.3 percent of the funds were sent to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, 11.9 percent to peer-to-peer exchanges and the other 23.8 percent used conversion services such as mixing services, bitcoin ATMs and gambling sites. <br />The report found, "exchanges are regularly processing the stolen funds, allowing the hackers to convert the funds to traditional currencies or other cryptocurrencies." <br /><br />This is due to the fact that the stolen funds look like they are coming from the legitimate owners to the exchanges not hacked. <br /><br />It can also be difficult for exchanges to tell if cryptocurrency has been stolen without having specialized investigation software.
