According to bitcoin (BTC) node stats reported on the website of bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr, 60.22% of the coin’s full-nodes are running software still vulnerable to the inflation bug at press time. According to the reported data, the software running on 60,101 bitcoin full-nodes is vulnerable to the CVE-2018-17144 bug. As Cointelegraph reported at the end of September last year, the bug allows malicious miners to artificially inflate bitcoin’s supply via a simple type of double input. According to a Cointelegraph analysis, at the time — likely because of the possible catastrophic consequences of the presence of the bug …

The Shellbot cryptojacking malware has gone through an update and come out with some new capabilities, technology news website TechCrunch reported on May 1. Per the report, these findings come from Boston-based cybersecurity firm Threat Stack. The company claims that Shellbot, which was first discovered in 2005, has received a major update. The original Shellbot was capable of brute-forcing the credentials of SSH remote access services on Linux servers protected by weak passwords. The malware then mines privacy-focused monero (XMR). Threat Stack claims that this new-and-improved version is capable of spreading through an infected network and shutting down other miners …

Illicit crypto mining — or cryptojacking — against consumers “is essentially extinct,” declares a report released by cybersecurity company MalwareBytes on April 23. Per the report, after in-browser mining service CoinHive shut down in early March — when the team claimed that the project had become economically inviable — cryptojacking against consumers has sharply decreased. At the same time, the number of such attacks targeting businesses increased from the last quarter. Furthermore, MalwareBytes also notes that bitcoin (BTC) holders who use Electrum wallets on a Mac have lost over $2.3 million in stolen coins to a Trojanized version of the …

Documents published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on April 16 reveal that Texas-based cybersecurity company Forcepoint has been awarded a blockchain-related patent. Forcepoint is owned by U.S. defense contractor Raytheon and private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, and Crunchbase estimates its yearly revenue to be $600 million. The system described in the patent appears to be a complex user behavior monitoring and management system. The system would aim to store data about electronically-observable user interactions and then use this data to identify known good, anomalous and malevolent user actions to enhance the system’s cybersecurity. Some versions …

Digital payments giant PayPal has won a cybersecurity patent to protect users from crypto ransomware, according to a document from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published on April 16. The system described in the patent, entitled “Techniques for ransomware detection and mitigation,” intends to improve the detection of ransomware and prevent it from locking up users’ access to their files. PayPal’s patent describes ransomware as a malware that may encrypt original data and delete the non-encrypted original version, with the malicious party usually demanding users to pay them in anonymous cryptocurrency in order to decrypt the files. …

KT Corporation, South Korea’s largest telecom firm, has launched its blockchain-powered fifth-generation (5G) network brand, local news agency The Korea Times reports on April 16. Called “GiGA Chain,” the brand intends to boost the security of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and to protect them from cyberattacks, the report says. As a part of the new brand, KT developed GiGA Stealth technology that prevents hacking attacks by hiding the IP addresses of the connected devices. According to the report, the blockchain-enabled tech makes IP addresses virtually invisible to hackers. Lee Dong-myeon, president of the future platform business group at KT, said that …

A federal jury has convicted two Romanian alleged cybercriminals of spreading malware to steal credit card credentials and illicitly mine cryptocurrency, an announcement from the official website of the United States Department of Justice revealed on April 11. The malware allegedly spread by the suspects was reportedly used for cryptojacking and to steal credit card and other data that the suspects would have sold on darknet markets and used to engage in online auction fraud. As the Justice Department press release reports, Bogdan Nicolescu, 36, and Radu Miclaus, 37, were convicted after a 12-day trial. The two individuals were charged …

A subsidiary of Swiss cybersecurity and blockchain firm WISeKey has raised $7 million in an pre-funding round prior to launching a security token offering (STO), the company confirmed in a press release on April 11. WISeCoin, which came into being in August last year, plans to conduct the STO in Q2. Responsible for managing all of WISeKey’s blockchain initiatives and operations, the vertically-integrated platform intends to raise a total of 17,587,527 Swiss francs ($17,563,695) to expand its activities. These include the use of various disruptive technologies, specifically focusing on the Internet of Things (IoT) given WISeKey’s major presence as a …

The World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report about blockchain cybersecurity on April 5. The report points out that most data breaches do not result from the level of skill of the hackers, but instead happen because appropriate security measures often are not implemented. The WEF further claims that while attackers do compromise blockchains themselves, they much more often try to exploit or compromise their deployment. The WEF references the data breach of retail giant Target, which lead to both the CEO and chief information officer being fired, also mentioning that the director of the United States Government Office of …

Jameel Ahmad, the deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the nation’s central bank, declared that the institution aims to issue a digital currency by 2025, Pakistani YouTube news channel Public News reported on April 1. English-language local media Dawn also reported today that Asad Umar, Pakistan’s finance minister, prompted the official’s statement during a ceremony celebrating the launch of Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) on Monday, April 1. According to Dawn, the minister asked the federal investigation agency and the central bank to ensure that the new system will feature cybersecurity. Umar purportedly claimed that a single high …

Switzerland-based blockchain and cybersecurity firm WISeKey has launched a new blockchain-powered digital identity solution to protect Internet of Things (IoT) devices and their data. The news was announced in a WISeKey press release on March 29. WISeKey focuses on secure authentication and identification solutions for people and smart objects by implementing a cryptographic tool called Root of Trust (RoT). WISeKey IoT claims to have an install base of over 1.5 billion secure microchips across “virtually all IoT sectors” — from connected carts and smart cities to drones and crypto tokens. RoT, the press release claims, is currently embedded in 4 …

Nick Percoco, chief security officer at United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, announced that two-factor authentication (2FA) is now mandatory for the exchange’s users in a post on the company’s official blog published on March 26. 2FA, in this case, is an additional component needed to access an account. Often 2FA requires the user, after entering their login information, to also enter a one time password (OTP) received via SMS. Per the announcement, Kraken supports Google Authenticator and YubiKey as 2FA implementations. YubiKey is a hardware device dedicated to generating OTPs, while Google Authenticator is a smartphone app meant to do …