Hackers copied the tech site Privnote, which can read user information and tamper with bitcoin addresses

BlockBeats, Privnote is a free online service that allows users to send encrypted messages that are destroyed once they have been read. The black tech site was reportedly successfully copied by hackers in an attempt to redirect users' Bitcoin into the hands of criminals.

In an article on Sunday on the security blog KrebsonSecurity, journalist Brian Krebs warned users of a phishing scam that could lure unsuspecting victims to a knockoff site almost identical to Privnotes.com.

The fake site does not fully encrypt the information and can "read and/or modify all information sent by users". Equally worrying, it includes a script that searches for messages containing bitcoin addresses and changes the original address in the sent message to the hacker's own address. This means that any money sent will end up at the bitcoin address owned by the criminal, rather than the address the sender wants.

"As long as the Internet addresses of the sender and receiver are different, any message that contains a Bitcoin address is automatically modified to contain a different Bitcoin address," Krebs said in the post.

As you can see from the following figure, Privnotes.com is strikingly similar in name and appearance to the real Privnote site, and the fake site is ranked second in Google search results for 'Privnote'. "In addition, a person who incorrectly types' privnotes' in a Google search may see a misleading paid 'Privnote' AD at the top of the result, which in effect directs the user directly to privnotes.com," Krebs writes.

More embarrassingly, both the real Privnote site and the fake one have a feature that allows them to "read and destroy" the sent information. The real Privnote site boasts features that make the scam even harder to detect, meaning that victims can't go back and check the script's modified Bitcoin address because they're sending, reading, and deleting messages.

The original address: https://www.coindesk.com/encrypted-messaging-site-privnote-cloned-steal-bitcoin-crypto

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