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Hackers Set Sights on Over USD 700m Bitcoin Wallet That Might Also Be Empty
Hackers from across the globe have stepped up their efforts to break into a bitcoin (BTC) wallet that is thought to hold more than USD 700 million worth of crypto.
The wallet could be the seventh most valuable in the world and holds BTC 69,370 (USD 714m), per BitInfoCharts data. But its owner may be alarmed to learn that hackers have started to pass around the wallet’s address on forums, as competition hots up for the valuable bounty therein.
Alon Gal, Chief Technology Officer at cyber intelligence company Hudson Rock, told Vice magazine’s Motherboard that he had noticed the wallet, whose address is 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx, had become a hot topic of conversation on popular hacking site RaidForums.
Gal said,
“Stealing bitcoin wallets from victims worldwide is a common goal among cybercriminals. Wallets tend to be protected by strong passwords and in the event that a cybercriminal manages to obtain a wallet and cannot crack the password he might sell it to opportunistic hash crackers who are individuals with a large amount of graphics processing unit (GPU) power.”
And Gal added that “In the case of this bitcoin wallet, it seems that it had been circulating for a while with no luck to those who attempt cracking it.”
This said, it could also be possible that the wallet does not hold millions worth of crypto after all. Instead, experts claim that there is a chance it was altered to make it look as though it has the 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx address.
However, schemers may have ensured that it does not match up with the corresponding private key that is needed to retrieve the precious holdings.
“It's possible to doctor a bitcoin wallet.dat file to make it seem like it contains a high balance,” said the head of the crypto services firm Wallet Recovery Services.
The firm’s chief noted,
“The wallet file contains pairs of public keys and encrypted private key of the addresses it controls. So one could modify the file in a binary editor and change the public key of one of the address pairs to that of a high-value BTC address.”
In November last year, crypto research and analysis provider Coin Metrics released a study, which alleged that – as of block 600,000 on the Bitcoin blockchain – around BTC 1.5 million was presumed lost.
2020-09-11 20:00:47
Insight into China’s CBDC after Digital Yuan Wallet Briefly Went Live
Experts have been looking into a soft-launched digital yuan wallet that went live briefly late last month – and said they have uncovered important technical details, and possible usage scenarios.
The state-owned China Construction Bank (CCB), one of the biggest commercial banks in the world per market capitalization, has been working with the central People’s Bank of China (PBoC) on the latter’s digital currency pilots.
The CCB, along with three other government-run commercial banks, has been developing its own digital wallet service for the PBoC’s token.
The CCB’s wallets will allow the PBoC to distribute its token. They will also allow vendors to process digital yuan payments much as end-users currently do with e-pay platforms like Alipay.
But in late August, multiple web users in China were able to access a CCB soft-launched wallet that was apparently only intended for use in a controlled testbed environment. Some even tested out the wallet’s features and transferred funds to their wallets – until the CCB eventually pulled the plug, urging customers to be “patient.”
The CCB was even forced to close down wallets with funds in them – refunding customers through conventional bank transfers.
The CCB’s apparent gaffe has allowed Chinese experts to take a closer look at the wallet, however.
Per the People’s Daily, the CCB has since insisted that the wallet was simply a prototype and not evidence that the digital yuan’s launch was imminent.
Regardless, reporters noted that the wallet clearly had “payment, collection, scanning and transfer” functions. They said that it also made use of scannable QR codes and smartphone-based Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology.
The media outlet quoted a tech expert at a state-funded R&D center as stating that there was evidence that the wallet would also be usable offline – and needed neither phone network coverage nor WiFi/data connections to function.
“As long as the phone has enough battery power, the wallet will be functional,” the expert opined.
The media outlet said that there were in fact four tiers of digital yuan wallet available in the CCB offering. Each tier had a different ceiling for payments, as well as a maximum balance limit. The highest-limit wallet reportedly offered users a maximum balance of around USD 1,463, with a payment cap of around USD 531.
2020-09-08 20:00:38
Brazil Dips a Cautious Toe in the CBDC Pool, Token May Debut in 2022
Brazil has become the latest nation to unveil plans for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and may unveil the digital real in two years’ time – but the token’s would-be architects added an all-too-familiar, non-committal caveat.
Per an official release from the Banco Central do Brazil (BCB), the bank set up a “study group for the issuance of central bank digital currency” in “mid-August” this year.
Just like central banks across Europe and East Asia – particularly South Korea and Japan – the BCB has been careful with its wording, apparently wary of making an outright commitment to issuance.
Both the Bank of Korea and the Bank of Japan had been opposed to the idea of issuing CBDCs right up until the start of 2020, variously claiming that advanced economies had little need for a digital fiat. But both are now racing ahead with fast-paced pilot rollouts, while at the same time making claims that they are still undecided as to whether or not they will actually launch their tokens.
However, a number of events appear to have changed the minds of these banks, including the coronavirus pandemic, China’s fast-developing digital yuan project and Facebook’s Libra plans.
The BCB said that its new unit will be charged with “studying the digital currency issuance model to understand the phenomena and its potential impacts, particularly on as financial inclusion, economic growth, technological innovation and efficiency of financial transactions.”
The group will also look at “risk mapping – including cybersecurity, data protection and regulatory compliance issues – as well as an analysis of a CBDC’s impact on financial inclusion and stability and on the conduct of monetary and economic policies.”
The BCB’s governor, Roberto Campos Neto, used slightly more bullish language, however, suggesting at a media event that the token could roll out as early as 2022.
2020-09-05 20:16:33
As 'Apathy Towards Privacy' Prevails, This Firm Says It Can Track Monero
While claims that US crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace can track transactions in monero (XMR), the most popular privacy coin, was met with skepticism, other analysts warned about "user apathy towards privacy."
Yesterday, CipherTrace announced what it calls as the world’s first XMR tracing capabilities designed to allow law enforcement, government, and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to track transactions with the use of the coin that was designed as privacy-oriented and dedicated to protecting its users’ anonymity.
The firm recognized that monero is “notoriously difficult-to-trace” which explains why an estimated 45% of darknet markets use monero, making it the second-favorite cryptocurrency of choice for criminals, preceded only by bitcoin (BTC).
CipherTrace was commissioned by the US Department of Homeland Security to develop the new tracing tools. The current value of the contract is USD 2.4 million, with a potential value of up to USD 3.6 million.
The contract has resulted in the development of forensic tools for law enforcement and government agencies to trace and visualize XMR transaction flows for criminal investigations.
“This provides ways to track stolen monero currencies or monero currencies used in illegal transactions. It also helps assure cryptocurrency exchanges, OTC trading desks, investment funds and custody providers that they do not accept monero from illicit sources and investigate monero received from potentially illicit sources and take appropriate actions to stay in compliance,” the statement said.
Despite these claims, the Cryptoverse remains skeptical over the efficacy of CipherTrace’s latest tools, reminiscent of Russia’s alleged success at developing a prototype of a partial de-anonymizing platform for cryptocurrencies.
According to crypto market data provider Coin Metrics, "it is impossible to determine the sender of a monero transaction." Moreover, in 2017, Monero also adopted Bulletproofs, an even more recent cryptography advancement which hides (blinds) the amounts received, Coin Metrics said.
“They don't even have addresses visible, so only deductions might come from addresses/sub-addresses shared with exchanges & obfuscate over time every transaction by them or others,” added one Twitter user.
On Reddit, another user was equally unconvinced, saying that while “research is always ongoing in this area, I would be very surprised if this company has discovered some novel method of analysis that isn't already known from years of open research by the Monero communities and other academic and industry researchers. I would be even more surprised if they had a method that is broadly applicable to modern transactions, or that does not require significant and specific external data to draw definitive conclusions, like that from exchanges. They likely attempt to draw known statistical inferences from on-chain structures or external data, but again, it's not possible to know since they aren't saying.”
Cryptonews.com has contacted CipherTrace for comment.
However, Coin Metrics claims that "user apathy towards privacy is probably the biggest shortcoming of the current anonymous transactions systems."
"As crypto-currencies continue to be adopted by the wider public, its original privacy-oriented ethos must be transmitted in order for it to survive. Failing to do so could result in the original idea of anonymous transactions systems fading away and being superseded by other conceptions of what cryptocurrencies are useful for," the firm said in their newsletter today.
Set up in 2015, CipherTrace says it provides blockchain analytics and crypto intelligence services to a portfolio of some 150 customers, including banks, regulators, VASPs, and others.
At pixel time (13:21 UTC), XMR, ranked 18th by market capitalization, trades at USD 96.5 and is up by 1.6% in a day and 7.6% in a week. The price is also up by 13% in a month and 34% in a year.
2020-09-01 21:00:35
TronWallet's 4th Generation Klever App Launches w/ Multiple Announcements
Klever App, the “bigger house” for TronWallet and a major component in the Klever ecosystem, has officially launched, thus expanding the platform of the former TronWallet, and announcing new partnerships, expansions, pre-paid credit cards, and digital bank accounts, among other things.
"The 4th generation crypto wallet Klever is now available for download on iOS & Android," said the team in an emailed press release. The app is built using Klever OS technology which itself was "built entirely in-house."
TronWallet had announced its move, name change, and additional features through its official blog in July, stating the need to “expand into the wider crypto sphere.” At the time, it listed four main components coming to the Klever ecosystem: Klever OS, Klever App, Klever Exchange, and Klever Labs.
Through the more advanced Klever platform, the wallet service provider said it hoped to attract more users from other blockchain and crypto projects to join its platform.
Among other upgrades, the Klever app has enabled the staking of its Klever (KLV) Tokens at the rate of 16%. In fulfilling its expansion agenda, the Klever noted that it will be adding more tokens to the staking service moving forward. The team aims to do this by forming partnerships with credit and lending firms. The staking feature will increase the current circulating supply of each underlying token by using an “inflationary smart contract,” the firm noted.
The Klever app supports "thousands of TRC10, TRC20, and ERC20 tokens in its wallet", as well as bitcoin (BTC), tron (TRX), and ethereum (ETH) blockchains with plans to add more chains following this launch.
"An innovative new feature of Klever is that it allows the user to save BTC, ETH, and TRX contacts and addresses directly in the cloud," they said.
Other major features of the Klever app include a multi-coin swap provision, an embedded Klever Browser, high-risk warning pop-ups for suspicious sites through the Klever browser, and a Klever Bank.
The announcement stressed that the app comes with a "new in-app Staking feature," adding that, besides the KLV and TRX staking, support for additional coins and tokens will be deployed "soon." It claimed that "over the past 24 hours, the Klever Swap engine processed over 8,000 individual swaps from our users, handling a trading volume exceeding USD 1.2 million."
As for the Klever Bank, the announcement describes it as "a local bank" meant to enable people who "don’t know anything about crypto to participate in this new economy in a safer and simpler way."
Towards this end, Klever claims to have found "a reliable and reputable partner in a new bank in Brazil to validate the model and services provided," and has partnered "with a pioneering bank that will support our operations to offer pre-paid credit cards and digital bank accounts."
They added that the goal is to "move quickly to expand the products and services of Klever Bank to more countries beyond the borders of Brazil in the coming months."
The same announcement added that the team hosted an In-App Offering (IAO) of the KLV token between August 20–24, raising USD 1.54 million via a peer-to-peer (P2P) community crowdfunding. The mentioned Klever Exchange, "which will support over 1 million transactions per second," is one of the products that will be built with the money raised.
Klever Labs "will build, develop, and deploy its first project Klever Browser in 2020–21, followed by Klever Blockchain in 2021," the team concluded.
2020-08-29 20:00:27
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2020-08-27 21:12:22
Industry ‘Under Threat’ as South Korean Police Raid Crypto Exchange
The exchange was set up in 2018 by gaming firm Axia, and has risen to become one of the most promising of the chasing pack of exchanges behind market leaders Bithumb and Upbit.
Details are sketchy so far, with the police yet to release a full statement, but multiple media outlets in Seoul have confirmed that officers have raided Coinbit’s offices in the affluent Gangnam District of the capital, seizing property or data belonging to the exchange as part of their investigation.
Police have also stated that the firm’s CEO, named only as Choi, and other executives are suspected of manipulating trade figures and operating “ghost” accounts – fake customer wallets, moving tokens around on employee-operated customers wallets to artificially boost volumes.
“This is a major blow for the industry. Exchanges here have been trying to clean up their act, with new compliance and security measures coming into force. If true, these allegations could set the industry back a year or more. At worst, they could prove devastating for exchanges, putting the health of the whole industry under threat.”
Per Seoul Shinmun, police suspect that up to 99% of the trading data Coinbit has released has come from fraudulent transactions involving bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), XRP and tether (USDT).
The media outlet reports that questions have also been raised about the exchange’s accountancy methodology, as the firm has never used an external auditor. One industry expert called Coinbit’s account records and auditing history “unreliable.”
2020-08-26 20:00:56
18% of Asked Americans Bought Crypto, Most Know Only Bitcoin - Survey
Nearly 20% of asked Americans bought crypto, but most of the surveyed people are familiar with bitcoin (BTC) only - and know nothing of altcoins, a recent survey concluded.
Commissioned by Coinflip, a major US-based Bitcoin ATM operator, the survey included 1,005 respondents, whose responses suggested that 18.4% of Americans have either purchased or invested in digital currencies (cryptocurrencies).
Additionally, the Southern part of the country seems to be more tilted towards cryptocurrencies - with 50% of the total respondents from the South saying they prefer to transact using cryptocurrencies.
Daniel Polotsky, co-founder and CEO of CoinFlip, is quoted in the press release as saying:
“There’s a lot of sensationalism around cryptocurrencies, but the truth is that they are gaining popularity among Americans who are looking for convenient, alternative financial services. In many cases, they are being used by people who are effectively shut out of the mainstream banking system because of its hefty service charges and fees.”
Furthermore, the study showed that 81% of the respondents are familiar with cryptocurrencies, but about 55% have heard only of Bitcoin and nothing of altcoins.
As an emailed press release detailed, 14.5% of Americans are considered “hardcore” crypto users with knowledge of three or more cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.
It also revealed that 43.9% of cryptocurrencies are purchased from an exchange, while bitcoin ATMs and in-person transactions at 28.2% accounted for the second most prevalent ways people purchase crypto.
The survey results suggested that, despite the increasing adoption of cryptocurrencies, US citizens want to have a choice in how they spend their money and as such, cash usage is still common in the U.S economy. “Over 40 percent of respondents said they could not imagine completely replacing paper money with electronic payment systems,” said the press release.
Polotsky said:
“Americans have spoken and they are saying they want choice in how they spend their money. It may suit some banks and big tech companies to push the narrative that nobody is using cash, but it is very much alive and well in our economy.”
Lastly, the results revealed “significant disillusionment with commercial banks in general” - less than half of the respondents, or 43%, said they trust them. Debit and credit cards are the most popular electronic methods of payment, and options like Apple Pay and PayPal are growing in popularity as well.
The question of cryptocurrency adoption both by individuals and institutions in different countries is such that persists in the cryptoverse. As the coronavirus pandemic toppled most economies around the world, citizens of certain nations whose monetary policies are perceived by the masses not to be so favorable began embracing crypto alternatives.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has particularly helped point out the inherent promises of digital currencies. A study conducted in March by bitFlyer Europe revealed that 66% of the 10,000 people polled said that cryptocurrencies will still exist in 2030. Per the exchange, this indicates that confidence continues to grow in cryptocurrencies, despite the crippling effect of coronavirus on the global economic landscape.
2020-08-23 20:00:35
Japanese Court Orders Conditional Confiscation of Coincheck Hack Funds
A court in Tokyo, Japan, has ordered the conditional seizure of some USD 46,000 worth of bitcoin (BTC) and NEM’s XEM token that has been traced back to the Coincheck hack of 2018 – the first-ever court-ordered crypto seizure in the nation's legal history.
Per Kyodo, a branch of the Tokyo District Court has placed a protective order on the funds ahead of a police-authorized seizure of the tokens. Prosecutors say the coins were deposited at a domestic crypto exchange by a 30-year-old man charged with handling stolen tokens from the hack earlier this year.
The man has previously been named as Takayoshi Doi (30), a doctor from Obihiro in Hokkaido. Police do not appear to believe the man was directly responsible for carrying out the attack, but have charged him with carrying out a dark web transaction to buy the tokens at a discounted rate – knowing full well that they had been stolen in the 2018 raid.
The Coincheck hack is still the biggest in crypto history to date, and saw criminals make off with some USD 400 million worth of NEM tokens from the exchange.
The funds have effectively been frozen and will be transferred to the government – possibly for auction – should Doi be proven guilty at his trial later this year.
Doi was arrested along with another man earlier this year, but the Tokyo police say that they are still on the hunt for the perpetrators of the attack, who are believed to have attempted to throw law enforcement officers off the scent by moving the tokens through a large range of domestic and overseas exchanges. Some of the stolen NEM tokens have since been exchanged for other cryptoassets such as BTC, say prosecutors.
2020-08-19 20:00:51
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2020-08-18 13:42:29