Aurora Labs' head of product, Matt Henderson says there is a sophisticated over-the-counter (OTC) transaction scam running about that almost duped him into losing a stash of his hard-earned cryptocurrency. Henderson detailed his personal run-in with a scam artist known as ‘Olai’ to his Twitter followers on Aug. 5. Olai's scam essentially involves tricking a victim into believing payment had been received for an OTC crypto transaction, when in fact it wasn’t. Today I nearly got caught by a fascinating and devious crypto scam during an OTC transaction. Read on to learn what happened, so you can avoid it happening …

Ethereum-based algorithmic stablecoin project Beanstalk Farms has relaunched its protocol just under four months after going offline after suffering a devastating $77 million governance exploit. The protocol and its governance have been paused since April following the governance exploit and flash loan attack, but were relaunched as of Aug. 6 in an event called the “Replant.” In an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, Beanstalk said it has come out of the ordeal stronger than ever, likely in reference to protocol's governance and security. “Beanstalk has come out on the other end of this ordeal stronger than ever. It is a testament …

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 hacker who exploited Solana-based liquidity protocol Crema Finance on July 2 returned most of the funds but was allowed to keep $1.6 million as a white hat bounty. The bounty, 45,455 Solana (SOL), is worth a generous 16.7% of the $9.6 million Crema lost initially, which forced the protocol to suspend services. Crema’s team began an investigation to identify the hacker by tracking their Discord handle and tracing the original gas source for the hacker’s address. Just as it seemed the team may have been onto the secret identity, it announced that it had been negotiating with the hacker. …

A new strain of crypto-malware is being spread via YouTube, tricking users to download software that’s designed to steal data from 30 crypto wallets and crypto-browser extensions. Cyber intelligence company Cyble in a June 30 blog post said it had been tracking the malware known as PennyWise — likely named after the monster in Stephen King’s horror novel It — since it was first identified in May. “Our investigation indicates that the stealer is an emerging threat,” wrote Cyble in a blog post on June 30: “In its current iteration, this stealer can target over 30 browsers and cryptocurrency applications …

Netherland-based Maastricht University (UM) is set to recover nearly €500,000 ($512,150) worth of Bitcoin (BTC) after the police authorities managed to solve the infamous ransomware attack in December 2019. In 2019, a ransomware hack targeted the said university and froze all its research data, emails and library resources. The hackers demanded €200,000 in BTC and the university, fearing losing critical research data, decided to pay the said amount . The Dutch Public Prosecution Service (DDPS) managed to track down one of the crypto wallets associated with the hack in 2020 to Ukraine and froze funds in the account valued at …

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 …

Crema Finance, a concentrated liquidity protocol over the Solana blockchain, announced the temporary suspension of its services owing to a successful exploit that has drained a substantial but undisclosed amount of funds. Soon after realizing the hack on its protocol, Crema Finance suspended the liquidity services to refrain the hacker from draining out its liquidity reserves — which include the funds of the service provider and investors. Attention! Our protocol seems to have just experienced a hacking. We temporarily suspended the program and are investigating it. Updates will be shared here ASAP. — CremaFinance (@Crema_Finance) July 3, 2022 Speaking to …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of key decentralized finance (DeFi) insights, a newsletter crafted to bring you some of the major developments over the last week. This past week, the DeFi ecosystem saw Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge relaunch with a fully backed 1:1 Ether (ETH) nearly three months after the infamous $600 million hacks. MakerDAO plans to invest $500 million into United States Treasurys and bonds to weather the ongoing bear market. Polkadot (DOT) announced that they would transform their governance model to move towards complete decentralization. While decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are seen as the future of …

The Lazarus Group, a well-known North Korean hacking syndicate, has been identified as the primary suspect in the recent attack that saw $100 million stolen from the Harmony protocol. According to a new report published Thursday by blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, the manner in which Harmony’s Horizon bridge was hacked and the way in which the stolen digital assets were consequently laundered bears a striking resemblance to other Lazarus Group attacks. “There are strong indications that North Korea’s Lazarus Group may be responsible for this theft, based on the nature of the hack and the subsequent laundering of the stolen …

North Korea leads the world in crypto crime, with over 15 documented instances of cyber theft amounting to $1.59 billion in stolen funds. However, the recent crypto market turmoil has wiped out millions of dollars from the country’s stolen crypto portfolio. The crypto market rundown that started in May wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars from the crypto industry, where most of the crypto assets fell by over 70% from their top. As a result majority of stolen crypto funds by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) hackers have registered a significant plunge as well. A report from …

Sky Mavis, developers of the popular play-to-earn (P2E) nonfungible token (NFT) game Axie Infinity have announced that the Ronin bridge is back online three months after it was hacked for more than $600 million. The Ronin bridge is an Ethereum sidechain built for Axie Infinity, and it enables users to transfer assets between the sidechain and the Ethereum mainnet. On March 29, 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) was drained from the bridge after hackers managed to gain access to private validator keys. The hack was worth more than $620 million at the time. According to the …