Personal data for over a million Russian nationals has reportedly been leaked. The data allegedly belongs to some of the citizens who participated in the recent blockchain-based e-vote on Constitutional amendments. The archive was reportedly available for everyone to download According to an investigation published by Russian language media outlet Meduza, an archive titled “degvoter.zip”, which contains said data, was publicly available for download for at least several hours on July 1 via a government website. The file has since been distributed through various Telegram groups and channels. The archive was password protected. According to the publication, however, it could …
A Russian hacker was sentenced to nine years in prison by a U.S. court on June 26. The hacker, Aleksei Burkov, was previously considered to be of personal interest by Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Exclusive cybercrime with premium $5k membership fee Burkov was accused of running a website called “Cardplanet” which sold payment card information: “Many of the card numbers offered for sale belonged to U.S. citizens. The stolen credit card data sold on Burkov’s site has resulted in over $20 million in fraudulent purchases made using U.S. credit card accounts.” Allegedly Burkov also ran an exclusive invite-only club for …
While the value of cryptocurrencies has varied wildly in the last year, this has not diminished crypto’s attractiveness to criminals. Many of them are moving their illegal activities underground and outside the view of law enforcement. Because of the public nature of most blockchains, however, this rapid movement shouldn’t be a major concern to law enforcement agencies. With the right tools and training, following the proceeds of crypto-enabled crime is actually not as difficult as it may seem. However, intelligence agencies must have a cryptocurrency investigation plan that includes the right tools to lawfully collect digital evidence and the properly …
Russia is set to pilot a national blockchain-based e-voting system in September. The new system was developed in partnership between Rostelecom, Russia’s largest integrated provider, and Waves Enterprise. Another recent blockchain e-voting experiment in Russia ended in fiasco after the system suffered a number of setbacks and attacks. The Russian government used a different blockchain provider of digital services and solutions, Bitfury, for that particular implementation however. Artem Kalikhov, chief product officer of Waves Enterprise, told Cointelegraph that their work with Rostelecom was independent of that previous pilot. Kalikhov said that the system developed by Waves employes zero-knowledge proofs and …
Waves Enterprise has launched Voting — a blockchain-powered e-voting platform centering corporate clients — for public beta testing. According to the official announcement, published on May 28, the new service aims to “leverage all the advantages of blockchain technology while retaining traditional voting rules and processes”. Artem Kalikhov, chief product officer of Waves Enterprise, told Cointelegraph that only a decentralized solution can guarantee data protection and transparency in online voting: “The blockchain provides a trustless environment for data exchange between independent encryption servers that act as participants of voting protocol. Voting results are protected by cryptographic algorithms. Blockchain technology does …