Search This Blog
Powered by Blogger.

Blog Archive

Labels

Load More
Trendy Right Now

Popular Posts

Showing posts with label bitcoin exchange. Show all posts
cryptocurrency mining
Bitcoin bitcoin exchange Blockchain Crypto-wallet cryptocurrency cryptocurrency hack cryptocurrency mining

New Wave of Cryptocurrency Misappropriation, Hacking, Theft and Fraud Targeting Users Massively in 2020


Crypto criminals have ramped up cryptocurrency theft, hacking, and fraud by a significant margin in the year 2020. They have amassed a sum of $1.36 billion in ill-gotten crypto from January 2020 to May 2020, according to the blockchain analytics firm. The year 2020 is recorded being on the track to become the second-costliest year of all in the history of crypto; only behind 2019’s record of $4.5 billion. The largest contribution in the year’s ongoing standings came from Chinese scam ‘WOTOKEN’ that allegedly scammed more than 700,000 users and stole over $1 billion worth of cryptocurrencies – 46,000 bitcoin, 2.04 million ethereum, 56,000 bitcoin cash, 292,000 litecoin, and 684,000 EOS.

Cryptocurrency is a virtual or digital currency that uses cryptographical functions to make financial transactions. In order to gain transparency and immutability, it makes use of blockchain technology. It is decentralized in nature as there is no central authority controlling or interfering in the processes that include making cryptocurrency exchanges directly between two parties using private and public keys. Equating to money in the real-world it attracts a large possibility of cyber fraud.

On June 2, 2020, CipherTrace released its Cryptocurrency Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Report covering the global trends and latest developments to fight money laundering, terrorism financing, and sanctions evasion. It highlighted the need for regulation and compliance while reporting that 74% of bitcoin in exchange-to-exchange transactions was the cross border and 88% of funds sent to exchanges in 2019 by US Bitcoin ATMs were offshore. Researchers also noted that phishing sites are the most popular COVID-19 related products marketed on the dark web.

“While only 9.8% of the dark market’s one-hop (direct) interactions went directly to exchanges, 30.7% of its two-hop (once removed) interactions went to exchanges—more than tripling the risk exposure to exchanges,” the report read.

In addition, cryptocriminals are also employing several new malware to target cryptocurrencies, an undocumented Trojan called ‘KryptoCibule’ has been found targeting various cryptocurrencies by replacing wallet addresses and stealing cryptocurrency-related files. Previously reported P2P botnet, FritzFrog attempted to brute-force SSH servers of government, education and medical institutions, and telecom players, with an objective of mining cryptocurrency via XMRig miner. Over two weeks ago, a new botnet, dubbed as TeamTNT was observed stealing AWS credentials from affected servers.

With the old techniques being upgraded and the new ones being continually introduced to mine illicit financial gains, cryptocurrencies have become one of the most increasingly targeted areas at present. Users are advised to stay perceptive to indicatives of criminal behavior.
Read more »
Vulnerabilities and Exploits
bitcoin exchange Hacking Kraken Vulnerabilities and Exploits

Kraken Bug: Traders Buy Bitcoins and Sell Them For Almost Double?



Kraken, the world’s oldest crypto-currency exchange medium recently revealed that a bug allegedly allowed specific customers to purchase and then resell $8,000 worth Bitcoin for $12,000.

It was mentioned on Twitter that the bug was found in an “unreleased advanced order type”.

The bug caused the orders to automatically execute without having cleared the requisite liquidity. Stop orders were immediately activated and filled at market rate.

The victims of this incident were strongly advised to submit “support tickets” with their questions. Nevertheless, the exchange was vehemently condemned.

Kraken’s CEO in response tweeted that he’s not sure how a “legitimate” trade takes place for pricing reasons or at least what boundaries it exists within.

The charts tell the story that a few over-fortunate traders quickly bought for a low price and sold for a fairly higher amount but the tweets tell another story.
Read more »
terrorists
Bitcoin bitcoin exchange cryptocurrency Cyberterrorism terrorists

Terrorists Resorting to Bitcoin for Funding




The military wing of Hamas, known by the name of 'Qassam Brigades', has established a highly sophisticated system which allows people to contribute in raising money by making donations which are extremely hard for the law department to trace.

In the most recent version of the wing's website, visitors are assigned their individual Bitcoin addresses which can be used by them to send the digital currency and make donations via a method which is nearly untraceable.

The site set up by the wing featuring the logo of the brigade is notably accessible in seven different languages, it also features a video which explains the procedure of acquiring and sending the digital currency in an increasingly sophisticated manner.

“This is going to be a part of the terrorist financing mix, and it is something that people should pay attention to", said Yaya Fanusie, a former analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Commenting on the matter, Sigal Mandelkar, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an interview, “We are dedicating a lot of resources very specifically to this space.”

“It is still relatively new to them, but I’m confident that we’re going to see more of it in the future.”  He added.

There is a certain allure of cryptocurrency to the con men as it allows to hold money and make transactions without the involvement of a common authority, such as PayPal which can potentially freeze funds and close down accounts. Everyone, across the globe, is open to creating a Bitcoin address and receiving digital tokens without having to provide an address or identity.

Referencing from the statements given by, Mr. Zarate, an adviser at Coinbase, “I think we are still in the experimentation phase for terrorist groups — they are trying to figure out how best to do this,”

“What’s a challenge is that you see them continuing to experiment.” He further added.





Read more »
database
Bitcoin bitcoin exchange Bitcoin investment CoinDesk cryptocurrency database

Bitcoin surges past $ 11,000

Bitcoin soared 9% on Monday, performing like a safe haven asset as it edged past $11,000 for the first time since around mid-July.

The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency climbed as high as $11,860, according to CoinDesk data, hitting a more than 3-week high. Bitcoin’s value now accounts for nearly 70% of the global crypto market, according to CoinMarketCap.

Global stock markets on the other hand have been sliding lower on the back of renewed trade uncertainty, after President Donald Trump said last week that Washington would impose 10% tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index slipped 1.6% on Monday while the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan plummeted 2.5%. Dow futures meanwhile were off by about 100 points.

Analysts have previously argued the case that bitcoin could be a safe haven asset, with investors having flocked to the digital asset in the past on the back of an escalation in U.S.-Sino tensions.

“Bitcoin has many use cases and one of the most important is as a form of digital gold,” Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency comparison platform CryptoCompare, told CNBC by email on Monday. “We have seen bitcoin jump before on macro uncertainty as it becomes a conduit and flight-to-safety asset.”

Yuan depreciation

Bitcoin’s jump in value also comes as China allowed the yuan to break the seven-per-dollar level for the first time in 11 years, triggering fears of a potential currency war.

The yuan fell after China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, set the currency’s daily midpoint at 6.9225 per dollar, its weakest level since December last year.

Simon Peters, an analyst at trading platform eToro, said Chinese investors could be seeking to diversify as the yuan depreciates.

“Given that Chinese investors make up a large proportion of crypto investors, there’s a strong possibility some are backing bitcoin’s chances against the yuan,” Peters said in a note on Monday.
Read more »
DDOS Attacks
bitcoin exchange cryptocurrency DDOS Attacks

Major cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex hit by cyber attack, pauses trading


The fourth biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Bitfinex, shut down briefly on Tuesday morning after a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack on its trading platform.

It started in the morning when the company paused operations for an “unplanned maintenance”, assuring users that all funds were safe, after which they went back live in a couple of hours.


Two hours later, trading was once again down and the exchange tweeted that its platform was “under extreme load”.


While the first outage was caused due to an issue with one of their infrastructure providers, according to the company, the second outage followed soon after and was claimed to have been caused by a DDoS attack, causing an “extreme load on the servers”.

“We are adjusting the DDoS protection measures to fend off the attack and be able to relaunch. Currently we are running tests to make sure we can safely restart operations,” the company reported on its website after the attack.

According to data from CoinDesk, Bitcoin prices fell almost 2 percent after the attack, hitting a low of $7,373.47 a coin at one point.

According to a report by CNBC, a Bitfinex spokesperson said, "The attack only impacted trading operations, and user accounts and their associated funds/account balances were not at risk at any point during the attack.”

Read more »
Market Capitalisation.
bitcoin exchange cryptocurrency Market Capitalisation.

Cryptocurrencies Observe A Dramatic Drop; Bitcoin Slumps below the $8,000 Mark


Over the most recent 3 days, the most profitable digital currency in the market has shed over USD 600 in its unit cost. In the value of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin drooped underneath USD 8,000 on Monday.

There was around a 7% decrease from the price 72 hours back and after the decline, the bitcoin was trading at USD 7,910 as indicated by CoinMarketCap. This is the first time in the week when it went beneath that protection level.

Be that as it may, it has been realized that the bitcoin's cost has been playing with USD 8,000 level over the most recent seven days. Even the other cryptocurrencies saw the same sensational drop. Ethereum dropped more than 11 per cent and Ripple drooped by more than 10 per cent in most recent couple of days and the digital currencies were trading at USD 464 and USD 0.57 at the time of announcing.

While the current dive brings bitcoin withdraw by critical sums, its cost is still high contrasted with all the more long haul execution. The current drop evacuates every one of the gains made in December – yet it is still up 2520 per cent in the course of the most recent year, with the recent drop essentially fixing the whole inconceivably quick surge the traders saw toward the end of the last year.

In general, the worldwide cryptocurrency market lost over USD 30 billion in its market top in the previous 72 hours and presently, the market capitalisation of the worldwide digital currency advertise is affixed at USD 298 billion.

Read more »
NEM
Bitcoin bitcoin exchange cryptocurrency hack Cyber Security NEM

Japan Cryptocurrency Exchange Coincheck starts refunds for $530m hack

The cryptocurrency exchange that fell to a hack of about $534 million in January this year has now started reimbursing the affected customers that lost fund in the hack.

In its blog post, Coincheck said that it will refund users as per its original compensation plan at the rate of 88.549JPY ($0.83) per NEM stolen and that to qualify for reparations, users must have held that amount of NEM on their platform at 23:59:59 JST on 26 January, 2018.

The total amount reimbursed will equal to about $420 million.

After the hack, Coincheck had imposed restrictions on trading and withdrawal of some cryptocurrencies on the exchange. The company is now going to lift some of these restrictions to allow for withdrawals and sales, according to another blog post.

It also said that it is working on evaluating the risks associated with each currency and will “confirm the technical security of our systems regarding these currencies in order to resume normal operations.”

The exchange also plans to resume deposits and purchases of all currencies, and open for new registrations once security and management systems have been updated.

“Once again, we would like to apologize for the inconveniences that the illicit transfer of NEM from out platform and the resulting suspension in services has caused our customers and anyone else affected by this incident. Thank you for your patience,” the company said in its blog post.
Read more »
NEM
Bitcoin bitcoin exchange cryptocurrency Cyber Crime Japan Cyber attack NEM

Japan cryptocurrency exchange to refund stolen assets worth $400m

Coincheck, one of Japan’s major cryptocurrency exchange, has promised to refund to its customers about $423m (£282m) stolen by hackers two days ago in one of the biggest thefts of digital funds.

The hack occurred on Friday, when the company detected an “unauthorised access” of the exchange and suspended trading for all cryptocurrencies apart from bitcoin.

The attackers were able to access the company’s NEM coins, which are a lesser known but still the world’s 10th biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation. The losses went up to about $534m (£380m).

The company has stated that it will reimburse the affected customers to nearly 90% of their loss using cash.

Over 260,000 are reported to have been affected by the hack.

According to Coincheck, the hackers were able to steal the NEM coins because they were kept in online “hot wallets” instead of the more secure and offline “cold wallets.”

The company claims that it is aware of the digital address where the coins have been transferred and believes the assets are recoverable.
Read more »
Cyber Attacks
bankruptcy bitcoin exchange cryptocurrency Cyber Attacks

Bitcoin Exchange Files for Bankruptcy After Being Hacked Again

Earlier this week, a major South Korean bitcoin exchange, Youbit, was hacked for the second time in less than 8 months. It has since filed for bankruptcy after releasing that the hackers had stolen 17% of its digital currency reserves.

The exchange trades ten virtual currencies, including bitcoin and ethereum.

Youbit says that the hackers had attacked its “hot-wallet”, which is an account kept online for holding crypto assets, and that its offline, cold-storage holdings are safe and still accessible, adding that all customers will be able to withdraw 75% of their assets once the bankruptcy proceedings are settled.

Allegedly, this attack is an addition to the series of cyberattacks in South Korea, all credited to North Korean hackers targeting the growing market of cryptocurrencies in South Korea.

This hack accentuates the growing concern in the market for the safety of digital currency and holdings.

While with traditional banking, people feel safe with their finances and there is less risk for the customers, cryptocurrencies are highly risky and are increasingly targeted by hackers.
Read more »
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)