The global COVID-19 pandemic has definitely created a clear delineation of remote work: The reliability of a company lies in its email service provider for all forms of communication. Let’s start with the origin of email. Email has been around for more than 50 years and is a formal channel of communication across the world. With more than 3 billion users, it is the most widely used and instantaneous form of communication. The first example of email can be found on computers at MIT in a program called “MAILBOX,” dating all the way back to the 1960s. However, it was …

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 …

Cryptocurrency exchange platform Hotbit has shut down all of its services after an attempted cyberattack on Thursday. “Hotbit just suffered a serious cyber-attack starting around 08:00 PM UTC, April 29, 2021, which led to the paralyzation of a number of some basic services,” a notice on the platform’s website reads. The hackers were reportedly unsuccessful in gaining access to Hotbit’s wallets but did manage to compromise the platform’s user database. Thus, the Hotbit team has advised customers to disregard any communication from entities claiming to be representatives of the exchange. With all normal operations currently paused during the ongoing maintenance, …

Decentralized finan’s rising popularity since 2019 has seen the emerging market segment become a target for hackers and opportunistic profiteers. According to a report by crypto research company Messari, DeFi protocols have lost about $284.9 million to hacks and other exploit attacks since 2019. This figure is about 0.65% of the adjusted total value locked of the Ethereum-based DeFi market, according to data from DappRadar. In February Messari calculated that over $284 million in DeFi was lost to hacks since 2019 At this point in time, the decentralized insurance industry only covers a fraction of TVL in DeFi. The need …

Five proposed class-action lawsuits against crypto firms have been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice in New York federal courts — without costs or attorney fees to any party. Quantstamp, Status Research, Civic Technologies, HDR Global Trading, and Kaydex are off the hook, however related cases are ongoing. The five class-action lawsuits dismissed on April 27 are part of a batch of 11 filed by Law firms Selendy & Gay PLLCRoche Freedman a year earlier. The lawsuits accused several crypto firms of causing investor harm by selling digital assets that were allegedly unlicensed securities without brokerage licensing, misleading investors, and engaging in …

The $50 million exploit of Uranium Finance, a decentralized finance protocol on Binance Smart Chain, may have been an inside job, according to a member of the project’s development team. The theory was put forward in Uranium Finance’s Telegram channel by a user named “Baymax,” who appears to be listed as an administrator. In a pinned post, Baymax explained that the security flaw leading to the exploit happened just two hours before version 2 of the protocol was launched. The suspicious timing of the exploit narrows down the list of potential perpetrators significantly. Baymax explained: “There are a total of …

A blockchain network delivers unlimited scalability and a record-breaking 100,000 transactions per second — features that could transform the way this technology is used. ParallelChain, developed by Hong Kong-based blockchain startup Digital Transaction Limited, says it is the only blockchain platform in the market that has successfully solved the three major pain points of first-generation blockchains with no compromise: Scalability, speed, and security. Its speed is probably the most significant of the three. At 100,000 TPS, ParallelChain is four times faster than Visa’s capability of 24,000 TPS. It is also much faster than other blockchains such as Polkadot, Cardano and …

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s latest product — digital stock tokens representing fractions of equity shares like Tesla and Coinbase — is reportedly being studied by European and British regulators over its possible non-compliance with securities laws. A new report from the Financial Times claims that regulators are concerned the tokens may not provide sufficiently transparent corporate disclosures, specifically an investment prospectus, that would be required if the tokens were judged to be securities. Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, or BaFin, told FT reporters that while it could not comment on the case specifically: “Fundamentally [...] the following applies: if tokens are …

Decentralized lending protocol Cream Finance is backing another major effort to improve the security of decentralized finance. On Tuesday, Cream Finance announced a new security campaign in collaboration with several DeFi platforms like Immunefi, Armor and DeFiSafety to bring stronger security to its protocol and the wider DeFi ecosystem. As part of the campaign, Cream Finance is launching a $1.5 million bug bounty program with blockchain bounty platform Immunefi to strengthen Cream’s protocol, API and website security. The new bug bounty will focus on Cream Finance’s smart contracts and the prevention of potential exploits against user funds, assets and data …

There has been a lot of talk about the recent “hacks” in the decentralized finance realm, particularly in the cases of Harvest FInance and Pickle Finance. That talk is more than necessary, considering hackers stole more than $100 million from DeFi projects in 2020, accounting for 50% of all hacks this year, according to a CipherTrace report. Related: Roundup of crypto hacks, exploits and heists in 2020 Some point out that the occurrences were merely exploits that shined a light on the vulnerabilities of the respective smart contracts. The thieves didn’t really break into anything, they just happened to casually …

Crypto asset lending platform, Celsius Network, has revealed an email server breach that resulted in malicious phishing links being sent to customers. An April 15 announcement notes that some of Celsius’ customers have been receiving emails and SMS messages directing them to a malicious website impersonating the Celsius platform. The messages claim the link would direct them to a new web wallet from Celsius, purporting to offer $500 to users who create a wallet using the link. Celsius asserts the phishing links were sent after “an unauthorized party managed to gain access to a back-up third-party email distribution system which …

A decentralized autonomous organization that governs a growing number of protocols says the initial vision for DeFi “has been corrupted by greed, inefficiency and sheer incompetence” — and says a drastic new approach is needed to ensure this sector reaches its full potential. According to Jigstack, the Ethereum landscape is fragmented, with thousands of DApps that offer varying degrees of quality. Millions of dollars in user funds have been lost, hacked, stolen or fraudulently misplaced in the past year — and “everything the industry promised to deliver has yet to be brought to life in a professional manner.” Jigstack’s founders …