![]() ![]() ![]() Enslaving devices to mine crypto-currency “A lot of governments are also getting more serious about how they are treating crypto-currency, not only regulating the exchanges, but improving the anti-money laundering procedures and other operations.”Ģ. “A lot of exchanges are getting a lot more serious about security and creating risk programs that better protect their assets,” he said. With a greater focus on security and risk management and more oversight by government regulators, however, exchanges are getting better at fending off hackers, said Flashpoint’s Gray. The following year, another exchange, BitStamp, announced that its “hot wallet,” or operational funds, had been stolen by hackers. Gox failed following two breaches, one for nearly $9 million in 2011 and another for a whopping $450 million in 2014. Taking advantage of lax exchange securityĬyber-attackers will continue to assail currency exchanges.Ĭoincheck is just the latest-and most major-breach of an exchange. Here are five ways that criminals are utilizing cryptocurrencies in their attacks.ġ. “The attackers are evolving and doing whatever they can to maximize their profit,” said Nadav Avital, security research team leader at Imperva.Īs the value of the crypto-currency ecosystem grows, and more companies adopt the distributed ledger technology of the blockchain to implement security in other contexts, cyber-criminals will focus more heavily on taking advantage of the digital currencies. In the third quarter of 2017, about half of all malware focused on crypto-currencies, but by the last quarter of the year, that had grown to about 90 percent of malware, according to web application security firm Imperva. Malware, for example, has increasingly incorporated payloads that manipulate crypto-currencies, either searching for and stealing wallets or turning a compromised computer into a currency-mining bot. While cyber-criminals have often used crypto-currencies as a way to monetize their diverse illicit schemes, they are increasingly finding other ways to incorporate crypto-currencies into their attacks and operations. “Not just with exchanges, but also in terms of wallets and the number of crypto-currency miners we have seen recently.” “Definitely, the rising valuations of crypto-currency has had an impact on the number of attacks that we have seen,” he said. ![]() Such attacks will continue as the value of crypto-currencies grow and as their uses become more legitimate and oversight becomes more stringent, said Ian Gray, senior intelligence analyst with risk intelligence firm Flashpoint. The attack, which accounted for about a sixth of the $3.7 billion NEM market capitalization, could have destroyed the currency, but Japanese online brokerage firm Monex Group bought the company for about $33 million. The total value of the haul was about $534 million, according to the most recent estimates. In January, for example, hackers compromised crypto-currency exchange Coincheck, stealing 500 million NEM tokens from the company’s vulnerable wallet. Yet, criminals have increasingly targeted the burgeoning ecosystem for virtual currencies, looking to illicitly generate currency through mining, by stealing currency from exchanges and wallets, and by finding new ways to deny service for extortion and revenge. Before speculation led to the skyrocketing market capitalizations of crypto-currencies over the past year, online crime was a significant driver of the commercial value of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies.ĭark Web transactions for drugs, payoffs for ransomware attacks and money laundering for a variety of criminal enterprises drove much of the initial value increases of the currencies.
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