hacking
Crypto’s recovery requires more aggressive solutions to fraud
It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that our industry is facing tough times. We’ve been in the midst of a “crypto winter” for some time now, with the prices of mainstays, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), tumbling. Likewise, monthly nonfungible token (NFT) trading volumes have fallen more than 90% since their multibillion dollar peak back in January of this year. Of course, these declines have only been exacerbated by the numerous black swan events rocking the crypto world, such as the FTX and Three Arrows Capital meltdowns. Taken together, it shouldn’t be a surprise that crypto is facing a trust deficit. While the destructive actions of reckless CEOs must be addressed and the individuals responsible for these events must be held accountable, our industry cannot stop there if w...
Developers need to stop crypto hackers — or face regulation in 2023
Third-party data breaches have exploded. The problem? Companies, including cryptocurrency exchanges, don’t know how to protect against them. When exchanges sign new vendors, most just innately expect that their vendors employ the same level of scrutiny as they do. Others don’t consider it at all. In today’s age, it isn’t just a good practice to test for vulnerabilities down the supply chain — it is absolutely necessary. Many exchanges are backed by international financiers and those new to financial technologies. Many are even new to technology altogether, instead backed by venture capitalists looking to get their feet wet in a burgeoning industry. In and of itself, that isn’t necessarily a problem. However, firms that haven’t grown up in the fintech arena often don’t fully grasp the exten...
Scary stats: $3B stolen in 2022 as of ‘Hacktober,’ doubling 2021
The month of October has broken all records for crypto exploits and the amount of digital loot pilfered — living up to its new moniker of “Hacktober” — according to the latest figures. On Oct. 31, blockchain security firm PeckShield tweeted some scary statistics for the month, reporting a total of $2.98 billion in stolen digital assets as of Oct. 31, 2022, which is nearly double the $1.55 billion lost in all of 2021. “Hacktober” saw around 44 exploits affecting 53 protocols, it added. Malicious actors made off with a whopping $760 million in the month, however, $100 million had been returned. #PeckShieldAlert ~44 exploits (53 protocols affected) grabbed ~$760.2M in Oct. 2022, and ~$100M already returned the exploited protocols (Total loss: $657.2M)As of Octobe...
Blockchain Streaming Platform Audius Victim of $6M Hack
Audius, a blockchain-based streaming service, announced over the weekend that a hacker managed to steal and sell millions of dollars worth of AUDIO tokens from the platform. The hacker was able to find and exploit a bug in Audius’ smart contract — the code that allows decentralized platforms to function without intermediaries. Other companies have been hit in a similar fashion: The blockchain security firm Beosin recently estimated that close to $2 billion has been lost to hacking incidents in the first half of 2022. “The most common hacking techniques continue to be contract vulnerability exploitation and flash loans,” Beosin noted. On Saturday, Audius tweeted that it was looking into “reports of an unauthorized transfer… from the community treasury.” The following day, the company publis...
How to Stop the Costliest Internet Scams
Image sourced from isnews.stir.ac.uk According to Steve Flynn, Sales and Marketing Director at ESET Southern Africa, it’s long past time organisations get a handle on business email compromise scams which generated more losses for victims in 2021 than any other type of cybercrime. While ransomware, hacking, API hacks, and all the other cybersecurity threats make headlines, it’s worth remembering that the costliest internet scam is still business email compromises, according to the latest FBI Internet Crime Report. Among the complaints received by the FBI in 2021, ransomware, business e-mail compromise (BEC) schemes, and the criminal use of cryptocurrency are among the top incidents reported. Technology-based systems are under attack, and they cost organisations around the world billions in...
Global Russian Hack Attack Targeted SA Energy Sector, US Claims
Sourced from International IDEA South Africa came out as one of 135 countries that the US claims Russian government employees targeted between 2012 and 2017 as part of two massive hack campaigns allegedly aimed at disrupting energy companies and critical infrastructure. According to Daily Maverick, the aim was to undertake a sophisticated campaign to target, compromise, and maintain continued access to the networks of critical infrastructure and energy companies worldwide. When asked if Eskom was targeted by Russia, the South African energy utility said that it, like many organisations, combats many cyber-attacks. Eskom, however, did not specify if it was targeted by Russian actors, specifically, or not. “We are aware that, daily, cybercriminals are actively targeting various sectors, incl...
Italy Investigates Russia’s Kaspersky for Allegedly Launching Cyberattacks
Sourced from Hypertext On Friday, Italy’s data watchdog said it is investigating Kaspersky, a Russian multinational cybersecurity company, for launching cyberattacks. According to The Guardian, the agency says it followed “alarms sounded by many Italian and European organisations specialised in computer security” over the potential use of Kaspersky software for hacking assaults in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The agency reportedly asked the company to provide details on the number and profiles of Italian users and whether their data was being transferred to Russia or elsewhere. Reuters reported that Germany’s British Standards Institution (BSI) also warned users of the antivirus software, saying the company could be coerced by Russian government agents to hack IT systems abroa...
4 Types of Hackers That You Probably Didn’t Know Existed
Image sourced from Pixabay A security hacker is someone who explores methods for breaching defences and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. To the laymen, hackers are known as the bad guys of the internet, but it is way more than that, and there are many types of hackers that you probably have never heard of before. The most common attacks on the internet include malware, phishing, Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks, Denial-of-Service (DOS) attacks, SQL injections, zero-day exploits, password attacks, and cross-site scripting. And all these types of attacks are the ones that gave hacking sort of a bad name. According to Kaspersky, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) became one of the first homes of hacking in 1969. They started out by altering software and hardware...
Nvidia hackers selling software unlock for graphics card crypto mining limiters
A hacking group that infiltrated Nvidia servers last month is attempting to sell software that could unlock crypto mining hash rate limiters on the firm’s flagship graphics cards. A South American hacking group going by the name LAPSUS$ claims to have stolen a terabyte of data from Nvidia servers in late February. The group is now offering software in the form of a customized driver to unlock limiters the company has put on its high-end graphics cards. Nvidia stated that it became aware of the incident on Feb. 23, and stated, according to reports on Mar. 2: “We are aware that the threat actor took employee credentials and some Nvidia proprietary information from our systems and has begun leaking it online.” The cybercriminal group has been trying to extort the California-based company thro...
Surging DDoS Attacks Drive Growing Demand for Third Party Protection Services
Image sourced from Shutterstock. As the global workforce largely shifted to work-from-home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, reliance on online services soared. Many businesses were able to successfully pivot to this new normal as remote connectivity allowed access to vital systems and data. But as is often the case, no good deed goes unpunished. As the latest NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence Report shows, cybercriminals have exploited new vulnerabilities created by remote work across a wide variety of vertical industries. Making matters worse, perpetrators no longer have to be particularly technology-savvy in order to pull off attacks. Today, it is easy and relatively inexpensive to access sophisticated attack tools via for-hire services: A cottage industry has sprung ...
Inside the Mind of Cybercriminals – How Threat Actors Think
Cybercriminals come in many different flavours, but the majority of them are in it for one thing: financial pay-off. They want the money that comes with offering their tools or services, selling stolen data, extortion like ransomware or plain fraud. And they all have one thing in common – your organisation is on their radar. This is why, says Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy and Evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa, it is critical to understand how cyber criminals operate, the tools they use and the approaches they take to embed robust security within the organisation. “With ransomware going rampant and victim organisations paying up to millions of U.S. dollars to the extortionists, this problem is just going to get worse. The U.S. government recently announced that ransomware is a national cybe...
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