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Blockchain is evolving into a new foundation for the internet. What began as a closed web is transitioning into an open source system driven by decentralized systems. Every sector is now adopting this technology to better serve its customers. Social communication, in particular, is seeing a lot of promise from blockchain solutions. Popular messaging apps…
Web3 is on the horizon and will likely have a large effect on the cybersecurity field. But what exactly is it — and what are the implications of this latest iteration of the internet for organizations? It’s perhaps easiest to describe Web3 by contrasting it with its predecessors, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Web 1.0 refers to…
The Acala Network’s aUSD stablecoin depegged by over 99% over the weekend and forced the Acala team to pause a hacker’s wallet, raising concerns about its claim of being decentralized. On Sunday, a hacker took advantage of a bug on the iBTC/aUSD liquidity pool which resulted in 1.2 billion aUSD being minted without collateral. This…
For the crypto industry, many are looking for 2022 to be the year of comprehensive regulatory and legislative clarity regarding crypto assets for the United States. Indeed, President Biden’s Executive Order earlier this year actually mandated and directed federal agencies to provide this kind of clear, ordered, and meaningful guidance. We’ve seen in the past that…
BlueBenx, a Brazilian crypto lending platform, reportedly blocked all of its 22,000 users from withdrawing their funds following an alleged hack that drained $32 million (or 160 million Brazilian real). While no details about the hack were made available, the company allegedly laid off most of its employees. BlueBenx joins the growing list of crypto companies…
The Dutch government agency responsible for investigating financial crimes said it has arrested an individual suspected of being a developer of the U.S.-sanctioned crypto mixing service Tornado Cash in a move that has rattled some crypto and privacy advocates. The Fiscal Information and Investigation Service said Friday that the arrested 29-year-old man is suspected to be…
Asked for his views on cryptocurrencies, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler likes to quote the poet James Whitcomb Riley, who wrote, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” The point of Gensler’s “duck test”…
Last week, millions of dollars were hacked from Solana’s ecosystem. While its blockchain wasn’t hacked directly, hackers were able to drain funds from Solana wallets. It’s still unclear exactly how the hackers were able to access the funds, but it appears that they were able to do so by uncovering users’ private keys. Private keys…
Widening mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrency will intensify state-sponsored cybertheft by North Korea, potentially adding to the hereditary despotic monarchy’s billions of funds stolen through hacking, participants in a Washington think tank panel said. North Korean-controlled cybercrime groups have stolen more than $2 billion. Pyongyang has recently turned to cryptocurrency theft, including a more than $600 million…
The pace of crypto hacks hasn’t slowed in the dog days of summer, with tens of millions of dollars stolen in August alone. As the crypto community carries on in the wake of the expensive exploits, many web3 users are biting their tongue waiting for the next big one to strike. On August 1, Nomad,…
Earlier this week at the Black Hat security conference, Belgian researcher Lennert Wouters revealed how he can mount a successful fault injection attack on a terminal for SpaceX’s satellite-based internet system. The successful hack was conducted using a homemade circuit board that Wouters claims cost roughly $25 to develop. The satellite dish used to access…
Cryptocurrency exchange dYdX said it blocked user accounts with even a token link to Tornado Cash, the crypto-mixing service sanctioned Monday by the U.S. Treasury Department. The Treasury Department’s action led to a significant increase in accounts flagged by dYdX’s compliance provider, which is used to highlight accounts potentially associated with ransomware, malware, child sex…
In a new report published by American-Japanese cybersecurity company Trend Micro, the firm said that the Metaverse possesses increasing vulnerabilities that could materialize within the next three to five years. As told by Trend Micro, the top threats to the sector, mainly from a regulatory standpoint, include NFT security concerns, the development of a “darkverse” similar…
If you have paid casual attention to crypto news over the past few years, you probably have a sense that the crypto market is unregulated—a tech-driven Wild West in which the rules of traditional finance do not apply. If you were Ishan Wahi, however, you would probably not have that sense. Wahi worked at Coinbase, a…
Although private digital currencies have rewarded some individuals and institutions, they are unstable financial asset that can bring social risks and costs, the agency warned. UNCTAD said their benefits to some are overshadowed by the threats they pose to financial stability, domestic resource mobilization, and the security of monetary systems. Cryptocurrencies are an alternative form of…
Aggressive U.S. moves to inhibit cryptocurrency mixing services employed by North Korean state-sponsored hackers are raising howls of opposition at home. The crypto community contends Washington is overreaching, preventing legitimate users from protecting their privacy and stifling software developers. On Monday, the U.S. Treasury forbade Americans to have any dealings with crypto mixer Tornado.cash, an…
Reports indicate that the decentralized finance (defi) protocol Curve was hacked for $570,000 in ethereum after people noticed that Curve’s front end was exploited. The attackers then tried to launder the funds via the crypto exchange Fixedfloat, and the trading platform’s team managed to freeze $200K worth of the stolen funds. Another defi hack was…
As the Ethereum Merge draws near, a key factor that will determine its success is the relative security of the blockchain under a proof-of-stake (PoS) regime. Experts say that Ethereum’s PoS chain will maintain the network’s security but at much lower cost. In a proof-of-work (PoW) system, counterfeiting cryptocurrencies requires a singular miner to control more…
Decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks cost crypto investors more than $2 billion in the first six months of the year alone. That’s more than in all of 2021 — so why aren’t regulators and politicians focusing on them more? Those numbers could get a lot worse, according to crypto security firm CertiK. It predicts that losses could…
Investors using “hot” or internet-connected crypto wallets on the well-known blockchain Solana came under attack from an unidentified bad actor shortly after cross-chain bridge Nomad became the target of a $200 million cryptocurrency heist. The incident has brought up numerous concerns regarding the security provided by both the Solana network and “hot” wallets, which are…
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic has claimed that over $540 million in illicit funds have been laundered through the decentralized cross-chain service RenBridge over the past two years. Elliptic’s vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, David Carlisle, has said that he expects regulators to start cracking down on cross-chain bridges in the next six months…
The year is 2027. It’s a time of great innovation and technological advancement, but also a time of chaos. What will the crypto market look like in 2027? (For those unfamiliar, that’s a line from the 2011 video game, Deus Ex.) Long-term predictions are notoriously difficult to make, but they are good thought experiments. One year…
Following the loss of almost $200 million in a security exploit on crypto protocol Nomad, security experts insisted that more education and security protocols are necessary for protecting web3 communities from hackers. “The crypto ecosystem is currently in a nascent stage of adoption,” Nick Percoco, chief security officer at Kraken, said to TechCrunch. “Despite the…
It’s been an unrelenting week for MetaMask developers. Reacting to the news that $4.5 million worth of funds had been drained from thousands of software wallets on Solana, the team behind MetaMask far and away the most popular software wallet for Ethereum and Ethereum-compatible networks combed through the wallet’s codebase to make sure users would…
North Korea is increasingly using its crypto heists to fund its nuclear weapons program, worried U.S. officials say. “I’m very concerned about North Korea’s cyber capabilities,” Anne Neuberger, the Biden administration’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said recently during an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “They…
Email marketing firm Klaviyo disclosed a data breach after threat actors gained access to internal systems and downloaded marketing lists for cryptocurrency-related customers. Klaviyo says the breach occurred on August 3rd after hackers stole an employee’s login credentials in a phishing attack. These login credentials were then used to access the employee’s account and internal Klaviyo…
In a high-profile hack on Saturday, Steven Galanis, the co-founder and CEO of the Cameo app, said that he was the victim of a crypto hack. Galanis tweeted that he had lost several NFTs, including one Bored Ape, and over $70,000 worth of cryptocurrency. While he said that the hack had taken place through his…