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Showing posts with label Data Analytics Agency. Show all posts

Here's a Quick Look at the Role of 'Covalent BlockChain Data API' in Terms of Data Gathering

 

In this article, we’re going to deep dive into the role of Covalent, the unified blockchain API. So, the first question that arises in all of our minds– What is covalent? 

Covalent is the only multi-chain API that provides every single point of on-chain data. This includes granular, historical, and blockchain metadata. Blockchain technologies can change the world, but this potential is left unfulfilled if the data is not accessible. Despite the proliferation of digital assets on the blockchain, granular and historical blockchain data is impossible to access by anyone but the most sophisticated and technically talented individuals. Querying blockchains directly is time-consuming and compute-intensive, while additionally refining and manipulating the data adds another layer of complexity. 

Current solutions require developer hours to write additional code to query granular and historical blockchain data. Developers need to be retrained while understanding the complex tools (for example, how to write a subgraph), which can take weeks or months to implement. This is expensive to adopt and slows down the mainstream adoption of blockchain technologies. Covalent is committed to creating the simplest solution possible for developers - no extra code needed, just one API call.

Ultimately, Covalent’s vision is to empower the pioneers of tomorrow by providing the richest and most robust data infrastructure for the entire blockchain ecosystem. Covalent does so through a single, unified API. The key point here is that your private key used to encrypt your data is held with a decentralized storage provider. Encryption plays a huge role in the excellent security and privacy that decentralized platforms have.

It is important to remember that Covalent is an API and requires a developer to integrate the product rather than an end-user consumer-facing product. In that regard, it is like Stripe or Twilio. 

First, there are the crypto natives; these are developers building DApps or working for enterprises adopting blockchain technologies. The majority of our customers belong to this bucket today.

The second bucket is regular fintech companies offering crypto products to their existing customers. Every single fintech company is today thinking of their crypto strategy - especially those companies catering to millennials and gen-z. These companies lack in-house blockchain expertise and are looking for a turn-key API solution to shorten their time to market. We have a growing customer segment that belongs to this bucket. 

What end-users and the market care about?


According to the researchers, there are four critical needs: - 

The first need is data security. End-users care that no one except themselves has access to their files. The second need is system speed. The service needs to offer fast upload and download speeds. The third is consumers are very conscious about pricing. As more and more data is being stored, end-users care deeply about costs. The fourth key requirement is data privacy. It’s important to make the distinction between data security and data privacy.

Data Analytics Agency Polecat Held To Ransom After Server Exposed 30TB Of Records

 


On October 29, 2020, the Wizcase CyberResearch Team which was lead by Ata Hakcil has discovered that the server ‘Elasticsearch’ which is being owned by Polecat company, displayed about 30TB of record data on the website without any authentication required to access the records or any other form of encryption in place. 

A UK-based data agency ‘Polecat’ that provides “a combination of advanced data analytics and human expertise, [to help] the world’s largest organizations achieve reputation, risk, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) management success” its official website reads. 

Researchers team had found records dating back to 2007 containing important information including employees’ usernames and passwords, social media records, around 6.5 billion tweets, and around one billion posts that generated from independent websites and blogs. 

Polecat’s cyber research team ‘Chase Williams’ has reported its discovery in a blog post which has been published on First March of 2021. 

The public information collected by the Polecat organization is gleaned on a foundation of daily happening events including subjects such as Covid-19, politicians, firearms, racism, and healthcare. Polecat was warned by the Wizcase research team about the data ransom on October 30 and the first of November 2020. Nevertheless, it just takes some seconds for an open unsecured server or bucket to be traced and exploited by malicious actors – and this took place a day after the researcher’s findings. 

“On October 30, a Meow attack was launched against the database. Meow attacks replace database indexes with the suffix ‘gg-meow’, leading to the destruction of swathes of data” Wizcase said. 

Additionally, it added “approximately half of the firm’s records were wiped, and then in a second wave a further few terabytes of information were deleted. At this point, roughly 4TB remained in the server. Most of these records were then destroyed and a ransom note was spotted by the researchers that demanded 0.04 Bitcoin (BTC) – roughly $550 at the time – in return for the files’ recovery”. 

Wizcase research team has warned against these types of scams by saying that it is very essential to note that these types of cyberattacks are usually automated and sent to many unprotected open databases.