Coming every week, the Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Kik Launches $5 Million Crypto Funding Campaign for Lawsuit Against U.S. SEC Kik, a Canadian tokenized social media startup, has launched a $5 million crypto initiative in order to fund a lawsuit against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Kik CEO Ted Livingstone, also the founder of Kik’s crypto project the Kin …
Hackers from North Korea were behind a phishing scam targeting users of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange UpBit, Korean-language cryptocurrency news outlet CoinDesk Korea reported on May 29. According to findings by local cybersecurity firm East Security, the scam came in the form of an email sent to UpBit users requesting account information. The pretence was a fake giveaway, with the emails also containing a file called “Event Winner Personal Information Collection and Usage Agreement.hwp,” which would run malicious code when opened. UpBit had alerted traders a day before, warning anyone receiving an email from the address “
[email protected]” to discard it. …
United States sanctions incentivized North Korea to launch cyberattacks involving cryptocurrency, a senior FBI official told a conference. The comments were quoted by South Korean English-language news outlet Korea Herald on May 30. Speaking at an event organized by U.S. thinktank The Aspen Institute, Tonya Ugoretz, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said financial strain had driven North Korean state actors to cybercrime. As Cointelegraph reported, Pyongyang is suspected to be behind several major campaigns involving cryptocurrency ransomware and theft in recent years. These have ranged from global attacks, such as 2017’s WannaCry, to targeted moves against exchanges …
The director of Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, has warned that terror groups are increasingly being financed through cryptocurrencies, Russian news site RBK reported on May 21. FSB head Alexander Bortnikov said global terrorist organizations have been mastering the use of virtual currencies for some time, along with encrypted communication tools that enable them to evade security services. He added: “Electronic payment systems and cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by terrorists to move money received from some states and organizations that support the global terrorist network.” According to Bortnikov, terror groups are also raising funds through the slave trade …
A “blockchain bandit” has managed to amass almost 45,000 ether (ETH) by successfully guessing weak private keys, according to a report released by Independent Security Evaluators on April 23. Adrian Bednarek, a senior security analyst, said he discovered the sophisticated hacker by accident. While guessing a private key is meant to be a statistical improbability, he managed to uncover 732 private keys through his research — giving him the ability to complete transactions as if he was the account holder. The report notes that rather than using a brute force search for random private keys, it used a combination of …
American cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex has said that claims of North Korean users trading on its platform are false in a tweet on April 22. In the post, Bittrex stated that it had examined two accounts which allegedly belonged to users from North Korea, noting that it had investigated the same accounts back in October 2017. The exchange claims that South Korean residents mistakenly choose North Korea in the country dropdown menu. Bittrex said that it determined where the users were from through country identification, and physical and IP addresses, concluding that “there are no users from North Korea trading on …
Alleged North Korea-sponsored cybercrime group Lazarus is still targeting cryptocurrencies and adopting new tactics, according to a new report from cybersecurity and anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab published on March 26. The report reveals that allegedly state-sponsored hacker group Lazarus has been active with a new operation since last November, wherein the group uses PowerShell that allows them to manage and control Windows and macOS malware. The Lazarus team has reportedly developed custom PowerShell scripts that interact with C2 malicious servers and execute commands from the operator. C2 server script names, in their turn, are misrepresented as WordPress files, and other …
Top Stories This Week Six Global Banks Sign Up to Issue Stablecoins on IBM’s Now-Live Blockchain Network This week, six international banks signed letters of intent to issue their own stablecoins — which will be backed by their national fiat currencies — on IBM’s now-live blockchain-powered payments network, “World Wire.” According to the joint announcement by IBM and Stellar, the World Wire has gone live with over 44 banks on its service, supporting 47 currencies in 72 countries. The IBM project was launched with Stellar in September 2018, and plans to expand the blockchain-powered settlement network to further assets. The …
North Korean political dissident group Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD) is selling Ethereum-based (ETH) visas for entering the country once it is supposedly liberated. The CCD’s website advertises a “Limited issuance of 200,000 anonymous blockchain visas to visit Free Joseon (previously North Korea) upon liberation” Free Joseon is seemingly a reference to the Joseon Kingdom, a five century long dynasty that was succeeded by the Korean Empire. The visas are emitted in the form of non-fungible ERC-721 tokens dubbed G-VISA on the Ethereum blockchain. The price, for the first one thousand visas, will be 1 ETH. Per the announcement, the issuance …
North Korea has reportedly amassed $670 million in fiat and cryptocurrencies by conducting hacking attacks, Asia-focused financial newspaper Nikkei Asian Review reports on Friday, March 8. The publication cites a U.N. Security Council report. The report, prepared by a panel of experts, was presented to the Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee ahead of its annual report. According to the documents obtained by Nikkei, the hackers attacked overseas financial institutions from 2015 to 2018 and purportedly used blockchain “to cover their tracks.” As cited by Nikkei, the report states that the attack were allegedly conducted by a specialized corps within …
A recent spate of ransomware attacks estimated to have earned hackers 705.08 Bitcoin (BTC) ($2.5 million) likely came from Russian cybercriminals, not North Korean state-sponsored actors as initially thought. The development was reported on The Next Web’s crypto-focused news site Hard Fork on Jan. 14. Hard Fork cites evidence from cybersecurity research teams McAfee Labs and Crowdstrike, which have analyzed the strategies used in developing and disseminating the Ryuk ransomware strain, and concluded that the identity and motivations of its masterminds have most likely until now been misreported. The Ryuk campaign notably attracted wide attention following its targeting of major …
Andrew Bustamante, reportedly a former CIA intelligence officer, has claimed blockchain is “super powerful stuff” that represents a threat to America’s national security. Bustamante, who specializes in publishing life-hacks based on his knowledge of espionage, made his elliptical remarks in a subreddit thread on Dec. 22. Bustamante is also reportedly a United States Air Force veteran and Fortune 10 corporate advisor. He brought up blockchain in response to a question in a subreddit thread, on news aggregation site Reddit, dedicated to Bustamante’s “Everyday Espionage” — what he dubs an “integrated education and training platform that teaches international espionage tactics to …