Brave Software added PhishFort's anti-phishing tools to its browser yesterday, and the company announced the integration on Twitter. The move targets a growing problem: scammers stealing cryptocurrenc
Brave Software added PhishFort's anti-phishing tools to its browser yesterday, and the company announced the integration on Twitter. The move targets a growing problem: scammers stealing cryptocurrency by posing as legitimate services.
PhishFort's system maintains a spam list that catches known crypto scams and alerts users to suspicious domains. The announcement read: "Brave now uses PhishFort's open source anti-phishing solutions for our in-browser Crypto Wallets to better protect our users. PhishFort's spam list detects crypto scams and immediately warns our users of any suspicious domains."
Phishing attacks work by criminals impersonating trusted companies or individuals to extract passwords, banking details, or other sensitive data. The tactics range across email, text messages, and phone calls. Crypto holders have absorbed massive losses. Just last week, someone lost 1,400 bitcoins valued at more than $14 million through a phishing attack on an Electrum wallet.
Brave hasn't released technical specifics about the rollout. Details from PhishFort's June report give some sense of what the tool does: "When the reward is as valuable and anonymous as cryptocurrency assets and secrets, these attackers quickly iterate and target the most used and most talked about apps. When you're a crypto-user, your username and password are only the start of your problems — and phishers are beginning to realize this…and they're beginning to exploit the specific tools that we use to interface with our crypto."
PhishFort already has a track record with crypto companies. In April, the firm helped identify and remove 49 malicious Chrome extensions designed to steal credentials from digital asset holders.
Crypto users favor Brave for its privacy protections and built-in cryptocurrency tools. The browser blocks website trackers and integrates the Basic Attention Token (BAT), which users earn and spend within the ecosystem.
