Crypto International, a successor of controversial Swiss company Crypto AG, is reportedly dismissing dozens of employees following a major spying scandal. As many as 70 employees had to quit Crypto International after Crypto AG was found to be selling backdoored products to benefit agencies such as the United States Central Intelligence Agency in February. The firm reportedly confirmed the dismissals to Switzerland-centred publication Swissinfo.ch on Friday. Representatives at Crypto International reportedly said that the dismissals were unavoidable because the government recently refused to resume the examination of export applications. Andreas Linde, co-founder of Crypto International, reportedly said that the action …

A Reddit user operating under the name “seraf1990” warned of a copy & paste crypto scam that replaced a wallet address he copied from Coinbase with one belonging to scammers. According to seraf1990, he lost about $350 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) — money that he notes was meant to go towards his rent for next month. The post explains that seraf1990 was attempting to cash out some BTC by sending it from Binance to his account on Coinbase. After copying the exchange’s Bitcoin wallet address, he pasted it into the appropriate field back on Binance and completed the transaction “without …

Empire Market, a major darknet marketplace for buying and selling illicit goods, has been offline for over 48 hours as of press time. Customers have begun to raise concerns about whether a distributed denial-of-service attack is causing the site to stay offline — or if something bigger is afoot. Twitter user Dark.fail, an anonymous journalist specializing in the Tor Project, suggested that the blackout “feels more stressful than [Empire market’s] frequent” downtime in 2019 when DDoS attacks kept the site offline for extended periods of time. Someone claiming to be one of Empire’s head moderators, named “Se7en”, issued an ambiguous …

Micheal O’Leary, the CEO of major budget airline Ryanair, has come out very bearish on Bitcoin (BTC). Recently speaking to The Times, O’Leary likened Bitcoin to a Ponzi scheme and advised investors to avoid it: “I have never, and would never, invest one cent in Bitcoin, which I believe is equivalent to a Ponzi scheme. [...] I would strongly advise everyone with any shred of common sense to ignore this false story and avoid Bitcoin like a plague.” O’Leary was referring to an apparent crypto scam, “Bitcoin Lifestyle,” which claimed to have his approval in a promotional campaign. A bogus …

Ethereum Classic (ETC) accelerator Ethereum Classic Labs announced a plan to protect the blockchain from further attacks. On Aug. 19 the organization proposed taking immediate action in implementing long-term changes to the network architecture over the next three to six months. The accelerator decided to focus their efforts on improving the network’s security after recent attacks on the blockchain. The immediate measures proposed by Ethereum Classic Labs include a “defensive mining” cooperation with mining pools and miners to maintain a consistent hashrate and gain the ability to increase it when needed. A higher hashrate would render a 51% attack against …

Ethereum Classic, a 2016 hard fork from Ethereum’s main blockchain, has suffered multiple concerning network attacks over the last two years. Two such attacks occurred within a seven-day span, totaling millions of dollars in losses. With the dust settling from the two 51% attacks, further details are now coming forward, as provided by a number of industry experts. “There is no debate about the attacks,” ETC Labs CEO Terry Culver told Cointelegraph on Aug. 7, answering a question on whether or not the network difficulties were in fact 51% attacks. “Community members shared the most accurate information available as quickly …

According to recently published research, an attacker has found vulnerabilities in the Tor browser network that might have allowed them to steal Bitcoin (BTC) from users. Tor was developed by the U.S. government for anonymous internet communication and has since been adopted by privacy advocates. Because of its privacy-preserving features, it is also popular with the denizens of the Dark Web. Many in the crypto community rely on Tor, entrusting their Bitcoin transactions to its security and anonymity. Confirmed malicious Tor exit capacity controlled by a malicious player. Source: nusenu. However, according to nusenu, who discovered this attack, this might …

Xavier Becerra, California's attorney general, recently told the public to watch out for possible crooked dealings surrounding crypto and digital assets. While broadly referencing other hacks, an Aug. 7 statement from the California Department of Justice said: "Recently, unscrupulous actors have impersonated well-known politicians, celebrities, and business executives on social media and YouTube channels in 'giveaway' scams that falsely promised, for example, to double any digital assets sent to a specific digital asset wallet." The comment, in part, refers to the recent July 15 Twitter attack, which saw a large number of influential accounts breached, including Joe Biden and Elon …

Passport data from 1.14 million Russians is now available for sale on underground shops via the dark web. This data was stolen from citizens who voted in the country’s recent constitutional reform referendum, which utilized Blockchain technology. According to Kommersant, quoting information provided by the hackers, illegal sellers have already sold over “30 thousand lines” of a document that contains the leaked data. Lines are listed at a cost of $1.50 each, but the price-per-line goes as low as $1 for parties purchasing the data in bulk. Although passport data cannot necessarily be used for sensitive purposes, the sellers claim …

U.S. government agency, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, recently put out a notice mentioning the risks and symptoms of internet-related nefarious activities occurring since COVID-19 arose. "Many illicit actors are engaged in fraudulent schemes that exploit vulnerabilities created by the pandemic," FinCEN said in a July 30 statement. The agency added: "This advisory contains descriptions of COVID-19-related malicious cyber activity and scams, associated financial red flag indicators, and information on reporting suspicious activity." FinCEN's statement follows a massive Twitter hack weeks ago FinCEN's advisory comes after a large-scale Twitter breach affected many top accounts, including Joe Biden, Elon …

Numerous unnecessary employees at Twitter allegedly have the ability to reset users’ accounts and modify their security settings. This is a problem that Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer, and the company’s board were warned about all the way back in 2015. According to Bloomberg, Twitter has over 1,500 workers with the abilities to reset accounts and review user breaches. This led to speculation that the hack on July 15 could have been prevented if timelier actions were taken. Security concerns addressed The report clarified that such credentials gave limited access to most of the workers involved in the social network’s …

Digital intelligence firm Cellebrite has launched its “Cellebrite Crypto Tracer” solution. The new offering is powered by CipherTrace and aims to trace illicit cryptocurrencies involved in money laundering, terrorism, drugs, human trafficking, weapon sales and ransomware schemes. The suite of tools will be available to investigators, analysts and non-technical agents who want to lawfully obtain evidence and trace criminals who use cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC) through the darknet. Citing figures from an Oxford University study, Cellebrite states that an estimated $76 billion worth of illegal activities involve Bitcoin. Curating millions of information references to trace transactions The Cellebrite Crypto Tracer …