Security news-Page 36
Web 3.0 would enable new possibilities and opportunities
Lately, the controversial topic of censorship on Big Tech platforms reached a turning point when U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign account was banned on both Twitter and Facebook for “spreading coronavirus misinformation.” The conversation over who has control over what kinds of information that get out to what kinds of audiences is not new. As we move toward Web 3.0, many believe this future version of the internet will be a more decentralized, immutable and censorship-resistant version of the web. The decentralized data storage solution InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS, is a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol that is designed to make …
Decentralization / Sept. 15, 2020
Binance will ‘do what they can’ to help recover funds stolen in yesterday’s $5M Eterbase hack
Eterbase, a Slovakia-based crypto exchange, was recently the victim of a $5M hack. According to an update from Eterbase, some of these funds appear to have ended up on a number of popular exchanges, including Binance, Huobi Global, and HitBTC. Binance CEO's Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, seemed to support efforts to stop the circulation of these stolen funds, replying: “Our security team was on this quite early. Will do what we can to assist.” Through Telegram, Eterbase also published a list of the hot wallets compromised by the hack. These included Bitcoin (BTC), Ehereum (ETH), Tron (TRX), Tezos (XTZ), Algorand …
Technology / Sept. 10, 2020
Blockchain needs to walk before it runs to DeFi
Decentralized finance has become the fastest-growing sector of the blockchain industry. Today, there are over 200 projects working on a wide variety of decentralized financial products and services. That number continues to increase every day as new DeFi-related projects launch. The most telling figure of this rapid growth is the staggering amount of money that is locked in DeFi, recently having passed the $7 billion threshold. The challenge is that increased growth leads to higher risks. As DeFi continues to grow at a rapid pace, this burgeoning industry will experience severe growing pains along the way unless proactive measures are …
Technology / Sept. 10, 2020
$5M stolen from a European crypto exchange after hot wallets compromised
Crypto exchange Eterbase recently fell victim to a hack of its hot wallets. According to a statement issued by the Slovak Republic-based exchange, hackers extracted approximately $5.4 million from the exchange’s accounts on August 8. Shortly thereafter, Eterbase assured users that law enforcement had already been informed about the incident. The company also said that they’ve contacted all major exchanges that may receive these coins at some point, likely in the hope of recovering some of the missing funds. The exchange did not specifically disclose which firms had been contacted, nor how the attack was accomplished due to “ongoing investigations” …
Blockchain / Sept. 9, 2020
Microsoft warns digital currency owners to be aware of new malware
In a tweet, Microsoft Security Intelligence (MSI) warned cryptocurrency owners who are also Windows users on August 27 that their funds in crypto wallets might be in danger because of a new malware. The new malware, called Anubis, seems to use code forked from Loki. It steals crypto wallet credentials, credit card details and other valuable information from these Windows users. According to MSI, it first discovered the malware in June in the cybercriminal underground. It has the same name with another potent banking Trojan that has been targeting Android smartphones for months. Source: MSI Tweet MSI stressed that the …
Blockchain / Sept. 6, 2020
Migration of $180 million worth of SUSHI from UniSwap to SushiSwap has been approved
The SushiSwap community just approved a move from Uniswap to its own native platform, which is being built as a fork of Uniswap's project. Almost 87% of the vote were in favor of the migration. Currently, there is close to $180 million worth of liquidity in the ETH/SUSHI pair on Uniswap. The SushiSwap’s total value staked has grown from zero to $1.4 billion in a matter of days. This would place the recently launched DeFi project behind Uniswap and tied with Maker and Aave. Like many other DeFi projects, it was launched with limited security audits. A review (not an …
Altcoin / Sept. 4, 2020
Blockchain technology, financial and self-sovereign digital identities
Imagine if it were possible for your identity to be available at any time, where third parties could only access it with your consent. The discourse that everyone has the right to own their digital identity has been gaining momentum around the world. And the path to this is the development of “decentralized digital identity” solutions. What is a self-sovereign identity? Here, it is important to clarify that according to the concept of self-sovereign digital identity, owners (holders) of the digital identity are responsible for the control and management of their data. And that not only includes basic personal data …
Decentralization / Sept. 2, 2020
Ethereum Classic suffers another 51% attack
The Ethereum Classic (ETC) network was hit by another 51% attack on August 29, causing the reorganization of more than 7,000 blocks just weeks after proposing security upgrades. In a tweet, Ethereum Classic confirmed the attack and promised it is working on potential solutions to the problem. “While ETC is still making progress in evaluating proposed solutions, we are aware of the current risk to the network at these low hash rate levels. To miners, exchanges, and other service providers we suggest keeping confirmation requirements levels well above 7K for now.” The attack comes a few weeks after developers proposed …
Blockchain / Aug. 30, 2020
Ledger CTO discusses wallet’s safety after multiple security setbacks
Ledger, one of the crypto industry’s most popular hardware wallet providers, has faced multiple difficulties in recent weeks, including a breach in the company’s customer contact database and a wallet vulnerability putting users’ Bitcoin (BTC) at risk. Are the recent events simply a summation of a few difficult weeks, or is a larger unraveling at play? Charles Guillemet, the chief technology officer of Ledger, told Cointelegraph: “As far as the database breach, an attacker got access to a portion of our e-commerce and marketing database through a third party’s API key that was misconfigured on our website, which allowed unauthorized …
Technology / Aug. 30, 2020
Chainlink acquires a privacy-preserving oracle protocol from Cornell University
Chainlink (LINK) has acquired a privacy-preserving oracle protocol DECO from Cornell University and one of its creators, Ari Juels, will be joining Chainlink as chief scientist. Previously, Juels served as chief scientist at RSA and has been teaching at Cornell University since 2014, one of the premier blockchain hubs in the world. He is taking a sabbatical to focus on his work at Chainlink. Along with his research partner Markus Jakobsson, he coined the term "proof-of-work". DECO employs advanced cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs to provide enhanced privacy to its users. In a Cointelegraph interview, Chainlink's co-founder Sergey Nazarov said the …
Technology / Aug. 29, 2020
Binance and Oasis Labs launch intelligence sharing platform for exchanges
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has teamed up with privacy-centric blockchain-powered cloud computing developers Oasis Labs to fight fraud in the crypto sector. Oasis was announced as the inaugural member and primary infrastructure provider for the Binance-led CryptoSafe Alliance on August 27. Oasis Labs’ “confidential smart contracts” will be utilized in building the decentralized CryptoSafe Platform which is designed to share threat intelligence data among crypto exchanges. The CryptoSafe Platform will be powered by the Oasis Network blockchain. The firms emphasize the need for the platform to enable collaborative fraud detection while ensuring that the data of participating exchanges …
Technology / Aug. 28, 2020
This DEX is ignoring the ‘test in production’ attitude held by other DeFi companies
IDEX, a decentralized exchange, recently underwent a security audit by Qauntstamp prior to the release of its 2.0 mainnet. The exchange's CEO Alex Wearn emphasized the importance of security audits to Cointelegraph: Depositing funds into contracts that the authors themselves state are unaudited, and were rushed to market in a matter of weeks, is clearly a dangerous game. There have been quite a few hacks and instances of lost funds as evidence of these potential risks. Wearn was alluding to the fact that many popular DeFi projects have launch unaudited — a decision which has led to catastrophic results more …
Technology / Aug. 27, 2020