A network that’s home to tools and applications championing anonymity has announced that it is exploring the development of oxUSD, a privacy preserving stablecoin. Oxen’s network is already used to power the anonymous messaging app Session — as well as Lokinet, a router that offers an alternative to Tor. However, the project’s team say their infrastructure is capable of handling so much more. They believe a private stablecoin would be a powerful complement to the products that are already on offer, delivering instant and untraceable digital payments. When it comes to the rationale behind launching such a digital asset, Oxen …

The U.S. Department of State has announced it will be taking a seemingly more active role in the pursuit of keeping some crypto users accountable. According to a Thursday Bloomberg report, the Biden administration intends to ramp up efforts to trace cryptocurrency payments, particularly when it comes to ransomware attacks. The government plans to address cybersecurity and crypto’s role as payment in such attacks. The report comes as the State Department recently announced its Rewards for Justice program would be offering bounties of up to $10 million for assistance in identifying actors responsible for cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in the …

Blockchain security firm CertiK announced Wednesday that it has received $37 million in fresh financing to expand its product and security capabilities for the cryptocurrency and DeFi industries. “We’re proud to advance transparency in the space by providing the tools and resources – including our official audit reports – so the community can make sense of vital security information,” said CertiK co-founder Professor Ronghu Gu. Kai Jiang, a partner at Coatue Management, said blockchain security is becoming increasingly important amid the DeFi revolution: “Decentralized finance has grown enormously over the last 18 months, giving millions of people access to innovative …

Immunefi, a security service outfit that specialized in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, has inked a collaboration with the Binance Smart Chain. According to a release issued on Friday, Immunefi will work in collaboration with BSC to improve the security of projects on the Binance chain. As part of the partnership, ethical hackers who take part in a campaign to discover vulnerabilities in BSC-based projects will earn rewards. As a security outfit, Immunefi has reportedly paid more than $3 million in bug bounties to ethical hackers. Major BSC protocols such as PancakeSwap, DODO, and Zapper among others are already deploying the …

A website aiming to support the development of Bitcoin has reportedly been hit with a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack. Cøbra, the pseudonymous owner of Bitcoin.org, reported on Twitter Monday that the website was hit with an “absolutely massive” DDoS attack along with a ransom demand for an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin (BTC). At the time of publication, Bitcoin.org is still accessible. “Back in the day, you could put up a reasonable fight against most DDoS attacks,” said Cøbra. “Now, they just down you at will. There is no ‘fight’ anymore, you go down and stay down until …

Blockchain intelligence platform TRM Labs has secured $14 million in Series A funding from venture funds across the crypto and technology sectors, sending a strong signal that major investors are backing digital-asset projects with ever-growing conviction. The venture capital arms of PayPal and Salesforce contributed to the raise, which was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, a VC with 130 IPOs under its belt. The full list of investors includes Initialized Capital, Jump Capital, Operator Partners, Blockchain Capital and executives from Google-parent Alphabet Inc. Ethan Kuzweil, a partner at Bessemer and new TRM board member, explained his firm’s rationale for leading …

United States President Joe Biden implied he made some progress in addressing ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure after speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Following a Wednesday summit in Geneva, Biden said he had spoken with Putin on the issue of cybersecurity, the U.S. president making it clear his opinion was certain areas of critical infrastructure were off limits for attacks — whether the targets were in Russia or the United States. Biden said the meeting had a positive tone, but he had told Putin “the United States will respond to actions that impair our vital interests or those of …

Recently, gas has been a hot topic in the news. In the crypto media, it’s been about Ethereum miner’s fees. In the mainstream media, it’s been about good old-fashioned gasoline, including a short-term lack thereof along the East Coast, thanks to an alleged DarkSide ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline system, which provides 45% of the East Coast’s supply of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. In cases of ransomware, we generally see a typical cycle repeat: Initially, the focus is on the attack, the root cause, the fallout and steps organizations can take to avoid attacks in the future. Then, …

Cryptocurrency and blockchain intelligence company CipherTrace has announced analytics support for Binance Smart Chain (BSC) amid a rise in attacks and vulnerabilities on protocols running on the network. In an announcement on May 27, the firm stated that it aims to identify higher-risk financial transactions taking place on BSC and its decentralized applications which now number more than 600. CipherTrace already tracks the activity of over a thousand digital assets. Dave Jevans, CEO of CipherTrace, stated that once support for a blockchain is added, the firm can add analytics for all applications built on that network. The inclusion of CipherTrace’s …

Major Turkish crypto exchange BtcTurk came forward about a data breach from mid-2018 that leaked sensitive information of over 500,000 users. According to the official announcement, the stolen data set contains BtcTurk users’ names, citizen ID numbers, emails, addresses, birthdates and mobile phone numbers. The stolen data set first appeared on an online forum for sale on Friday, with sample information as proof. The seller claimed that the information also contains user selfies with ID, a common approval requirement for crypto exchanges. Over the weekend, users who came across their personal information in the sample data used Crypto Twitter to …

Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, could pose a threat to financial systems if related risks are not managed, Big Three credit agency Fitch Ratings has warned. Fitch Ratings released a report on Monday entitled “Central Bank Digital Currencies: Opportunities, Risk and Disruption,” which discussed the major trade-offs between risks and benefits associated with CBDCs. Fitch Ratings stated that the key benefits of a retail CBDC lie in its potential ability to expand government-backed cashless payments in an effort to keep up with the wider digitalization of society. The biggest reasons to explore a CBDC for central banks and some …

Spartan Protocol, a liquidity platform for synthetic assets on the Binance Smart Chain, was drained of $30 million in a coordinated attack on its liquidity pool late Saturday. The exploit targeted a “flawed liquidity share calculation” in the SPARTA/WBNB liquidity pool, which enabled the attacker to withdraw the funds, blockchain security company PeckShield explained. The security expert continued: “In particular, the specific hack inflates the asset balance of the pool before burning the same amount of pool tokens to claim an unnecessarily large amount of underlying assets. The consequence of this attack results in more than $30M loss from the …