BNB Chain has launched a new platform, DappBay, to discover new Web3 projects. DappBay is equipped with a novel feature called Red Alarm, which assesses project risk levels in real-time and alerts users of potentially risky decentralized applications (DApps), according to a Thursday announcement. Red Alarm is a contract risk scanning tool offered by DappBay that helps users identify high-risk projects to protect their investments from rug pulls and scams. Users can check if a contract address has logical flaws or fraud risks by entering it into the Red Alarm feature. Gwendolyn Regina, an investment director at BNB Chain, said …
North Korea-backed cyberattacks on cryptocurrency and tech firms will only become more sophisticated over time as the country battles prolonged economic sanctions and resource shortages. Former CIA analyst Soo Kim told CNN on Sunday that the process of generating overseas crypto income for the regime has now become a “way of life” for the North Koreans: “In light of the challenges that the regime is facing — food shortages, fewer countries willing to engage with North Korea [...] this is just going to be something that they will continue to use because nobody is holding them back, essentially.” She also …
The British Army’s official Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts were breached on Sunday for almost four hours, with scammers promoting rip-off nonfungible token (NFT) collections and cryptocurrency scams. Just after 2:00 pm EST on Sunday, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MOD) Press Office tweeted it was aware the Army’s social media accounts were compromised and had begun an investigation. Nearly four hours later, close to 5:45 pm EST, the Office provided an update that the account breaches were resolved. The British Army's official Twitter account also apologized for the posts, saying it would conduct an investigation and “learn from …
Two QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theorist influencers allegedly caused their followers millions of dollars in losses by running a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme. The pair reportedly persuaded their thousands of followers to invest in a crypto portfolio, presenting a misleading mix of conspiratorial and genuine content along with claims about institutions backing the tokens to generate hype and raise the price of the portfolio. The allegations are included in an investigation by Logically, a group of data scientists and developers. It reported the two influencers running the Telegram channels WhipLash347 and the Quantum Stellar Initiative (QSI) coordinated to promote lists of Stellar (XLM) …
Last week, a WeChat post published by the Shanghai Fengxian Court began circulating in crypto circles regarding its recent ruling on a car sale in May 2019 made using digital currency. At the time, the buyer, identified only as Mr. Huang, signed a sales contract to purchase a 2019 Audi AL6 for 409,800 Chinese yuan, or $59.477 at the time of writing, in exchange for the consideration of 1,281 Unihash (UNIH) tokens with an undisclosed car dealership in Shanghai. Per the original contract, the seller was to deliver the car to Huang within three months’ time. According to the Shanghai …
Noah Davis, the nonfungible token (NFT) specialist at auction house Christie’s, has said he’s leaving the position in July to take up a post as brand lead for the CryptoPunks NFT collection with Yuga Labs. Announcing the move on Sunday in a Twitter thread, Davis looked to quash any anxieties holders had regarding the future of one of the oldest NFT projects, saying he “will not f*ck with the punks.” What does that mean? It means no Punks on lunchboxes or cringe TV shows/shitty movies. It means no arbitrary rushed utility or thoughtless airdrops. It means if you love your …
Just two months after losing $15.6 million in a price oracle manipulation exploit, Inverse Finance has again been hit with a flash loan exploit that saw the attackers make off with $1.26 million in Tether (USDT) and Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC). Inverse Finance is an Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol and a flash loan is a type of crypto loan that is usually borrowed and returned within a single transaction. Oracles report outside pricing information. The latest exploit worked by using a flash loan to manipulate the price oracle for a liquidity provider (LP) token used by the protocol’s money market …
One of the most popular crypto startups, OpenSea, has recently come under fire for stolen and plagiarized nonfungible tokens (NFTs). In light of the growing number of NFT scams, OpenSea has announced the launch of a new feature that will automatically hide suspicious NFT transfers from view on their marketplace. This will help to protect users from being scammed and ensure that only legitimate transactions are visible. According to a blog post on Monday, the new feature will automatically conceal suspicious NFT transfers to address key concerns around trust and safety on OpenSea. OpenSea has recently been focusing on enhancing …
“Everything is bigger in Texas” proved to be true during Consensus 2022. The crypto conference took place June 9–12 in Austin, Texas, this year, attracting over 20,000 people from across the globe, despite the 100-degree plus weather. According to the event sponsors, Consensus 2018, which was held at the Hilton Hotel in New York, had previously drawn in almost 9,000 attendees. Caitlin Long, CEO of Custodia — the Wyoming-based digital asset bank — told Cointelegraph that the event this year speaks volumes. “New York has sent a lot of this industry fleeing to places like Austin, Wyoming and Miami. It …
Illicit cryptocurrency activity in 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 has declined as a percentage of overall crypto activity, according to blockchain forensics firm CipherTrace. The cryptocurrency industry has long held a reputation in some jurisdictions as a haven for illegal activity. However, CipherTrace estimates that illicit activity was between 0.62% and 0.65% of overall cryptocurrency activity in 2020. The firm reported that it has now fallen to between 0.10% and 0.15% of overall activity in 2021. In its “Cryptocurrency Crime and Anti-Money Laundering” report released Monday, CipherTrace outlined that the top ten decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks in 2021 …
On June 4, the popular nonfungible token, or NFT, project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) suffered its third security compromise this year. Nearly 142 Ether (ETH) ($250,000) worth of NFTs was stolen after hackers gained access to the Discord account of a BAYC community manager and posted a message with a link to a fake website. The link advertised a limited-time free-NFT giveaway to users who connected their wallets, which were then drained of NFTs. During two prior occasions in April, hackers breached BAYC's Discord and Instagram pages and managed to siphon 91 NFTs, worth over $1.3 million at the …
The United States Federal Trade Commission has labeled social media and crypto a “combustible combination for fraud,” with nearly half of all crypto-related scams originating from social media platforms in 2021. Published on Friday, the report found that as much as $1 billion in crypto has been lost to scammers throughout the year, which was more than a five-fold increase from 2020, and nearly sixty times up from 2018. New analysis finds consumers reported losing more than $1 billion in #cryptocurrency to scams since 2021. Most of the losses consumers reported were to bogus cryptocurrency investment scams: https://t.co/MYGTcaw1aS #DataSpotlight /1 …