Tag: cryptocurrency
Image by Eva Rinaldi / License Creative Commons 3. The Nation State One of the supposed benefits of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is that they aren’t tied to any particular nation state. This prevents bitcoin assets from being frozen by the state, and gives consumers the freedom to do anything they want with their money.10 State sponsorship of…
Read MoreLast week, our esteemed colleague David Holmes answered the board’s question “Are we doing anything with bitcoin?” by slamming the door on a technological trend that is not only underway but is rapidly expanding. (Heck, bitcoin itself is “old news” now.) Still, it should be on every CISO’s brain. Even if CISOs don’t need to talk to…
Read MoreBack in September, I had the honor of moderating a panel session in Hong Kong under the theme of “Is Cybersecurity the Hidden Achilles of Hong Kong’s Digital Economy?”. At that time, China, the world’s leading bitcoin exchange market accounting for 90% of trading worldwide, yet had announced shutting down bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges, calling…
Read MoreF5 researchers recently noticed a new campaign exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 servers (CVE–2017–7269) in order to mine Electroneum crypto-currency. Last year, ESET security researchers reported that the same IIS vulnerability was abused to mine Monero, and install malware to launch targeted attacks against organizations by the notorious “Lazarus” group.…
Read MoreEvery CISO dreams of the unhackable computer. A common method of bullet-proofing a system is to disconnect it from the outside world.1 No Internet. No wireless. No modem. Then you surround the computer with guards and gates. This is called an air-gapped system and it is supposedly hack-proof. In reality, it’s not. In 2010, the…
Read MoreReleased as open-source software in 2009, Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining and can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. Much has been discussed about its robustness, so, could the notion that a 51% attack on a blockchain could move from ‘theoretical’ to ‘possible’? Read the full…
Read MoreOverall, the dollar losses are mounting, but the number of incidents has stayed pretty much the same, averaging 9 per year. During the uptick that occurred around 2013, the average jumped from three incidents per annum in previous years to 11 afterwards. What happened in 2013? Well, it was the Year of Bitcoin, per Forbes…
Read MoreHackers have a soft spot for targeting cryptocurrencies thanks to a lack of heavy regulation unlike traditional financial services. Cryptocurrency funds have no legal obligation to implement protection measures, so inherently they are not as exhaustive or technical. This makes them prime targets for hackers. Transactions can be extremely difficult to reverse, so although some…
Read MoreIntroduction Ten months ago we asked a rhetorical question: will losses from cryptocurrency exchange hacks hit one billion dollars in 2018? Indeed, they did. Cryptocurrency theft is growing both in terms of frequency of attacks and breadth of targets. Attackers aren’t just cryptojacking and targeting exchanges. According to endpoint security provider Carbon Black, $1.1 billion…
Read MoreThe cloud, like every other technology, was developed to help us do more things faster and more efficiently. It’s a business tool that provides the self-service flexibility of on-demand technological services decoupled from the need to physically deliver hardware and software. Organizations are flocking to leverage this power, but there are nagging questions: Is cloud…
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