Blockchain | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The North Korean state-backed hacking crew, otherwise known as the  Lazarus Group , has been attributed to yet another financially motivated campaign that leverages a trojanized decentralized finance (DeFi) wallet app to distribute a fully-featured backdoor onto compromised Windows systems. The app, which is equipped with functionalities to save and manage a cryptocurrency wallet, is also designed to trigger the launch of the implant that can take control of the infected host. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky  said  it first encountered the rogue application in mid-December 2021. The infection scheme initiated by the app also results in the deployment of the installer for a legitimate application, which gets overwritten with a trojanized version in an effort to cover its tracks. That said, the initial access avenue is unclear, although it's suspected to be a case of social engineering. The spawned malware, which masquerades as Google's Chrome web browser, subsequently

Microsoft has warned of emerging threats in the  Web3  landscape, including "ice phishing" campaigns, as a surge in adoption of blockchain and DeFi technologies emphasizes the need to build security into the decentralized web while it's still in its early stages. The company's Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team called out various new avenues through which malicious actors may attempt to trick cryptocurrency users into giving up their private cryptographic keys and carry out unauthorized fund transfers. "One aspect that the immutable and public blockchain enables is complete transparency, so an attack can be observed and studied after it occurred," Christian Seifert, principal research manager at Microsoft's Security and Compliance group,  said . "It also allows assessment of the financial impact of attacks, which is challenging in traditional Web2 phishing attacks." The theft of the keys could be carried out in several ways, including im

Super Low RPO with Continuous Data Protection: Dial Back to Just Seconds Before an Attack Zerto , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, can help you detect and recover from ransomware in near real-time. This solution leverages continuous data protection (CDP) to ensure all workloads have the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) possible. The most valuable thing about CDP is that it does not use snapshots, agents, or any other periodic data protection methodology. Zerto has no impact on production workloads and can achieve RPOs in the region of 5-15 seconds across thousands of virtual machines simultaneously. For example, the environment in the image below has nearly 1,000 VMs being protected with an average RPO of just six seconds! Application-Centric Protection: Group Your VMs to Gain Application-Level Control   You can protect your VMs with the Zerto application-centric approach using Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs). This logical grouping of VMs ensures that your whole applica

A group of academics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, has demonstrated what it calls a "scalable technique" to vet smart contracts and mitigate state-inconsistency bugs, discovering 47 zero-day vulnerabilities on the Ethereum blockchain in the process. Smart contracts are  programs  stored on the blockchain that are automatically executed when predetermined conditions are met based on the encoded terms of the agreement. They allow trusted transactions and agreements to be carried out between anonymous parties without the need for a central authority. In other words, the code itself is meant to be the final arbiter of "the deal" it represents, with the program controlling all aspects of the execution, and providing an immutable evidentiary audit trail of transactions that are both trackable and irreversible. This also means that vulnerabilities in the code could result in hefty losses, as evidenced by hacks aimed at  the DAO  and more recently, 

Google on Tuesday said it took steps to disrupt the operations of a sophisticated "multi-component" botnet called Glupteba that approximately infected more than one million Windows computers across the globe and stored its command-and-control server addresses on Bitcoin's blockchain as a resilience mechanism. As part of the efforts, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said it partnered with the CyberCrime Investigation Group over the past year to terminate around 63 million Google Docs that were observed to have distributed the malware, alongside 1,183 Google Accounts, 908 Cloud Projects, and 870 Google Ads accounts that were associated with its distribution. Google TAG further said it worked with internet infrastructure providers and hosting providers, such as Cloudflare, to dismantle the malware by taking down servers and placing interstitial warning pages in front of the malicious domains. In tandem, the internet giant also announced a lawsuit against two Russ

The Russian-led REvil ransomware gang was felled by an active multi-country law enforcement operation that resulted in its infrastructure being hacked and  taken offline  for a second time earlier this week, in what's the  latest action  taken by governments to disrupt the lucrative ecosystem. The takedown was first reported by  Reuters , quoting multiple private-sector cyber experts working with the U.S. government, noting that the  May cyber attack  on Colonial Pipeline relied on encryption software developed by REvil associates, officially corroborating DarkSide's  connections  to the prolific criminal outfit. Coinciding with the development, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic  disclosed  that $7 million in bitcoin held by the DarkSide ransomware group were moved through a series of new wallets, with a small fraction of the amount being transferred with each transfer to make the laundered money more difficult to track and  convert   the funds  into fiat currency through

Among the problems stemming from our systemic failure with cybersecurity, which ranges from decades-old software-development practices to Chinese and Russian cyber-attacks, one problem gets far less attention than it should—the insider threat. But the reality is that most organizations should be at least as worried about user management as they are about Bond villain-type hackers launching compromises from abroad. Most organizations have deployed single sign-on and modern identity-management solutions. These generally allow easy on-boarding, user management, and off-boarding. However, on mobile devices, these solutions have been less effective. Examples include mobile applications such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, or even SMS-which are common in the workforce. All of these tools allow for low-friction, agile communication in an increasingly mobile business environment. Today, many of these tools offer end-to-end encryption (e2ee), which is a boon when viewed through the lens of

Popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has suspended all transactions of Ethereum Classic (ETC)—the original unforked version of the Ethereum network—on their trading platforms, other products and services after detecting a potential attack on the cryptocurrency network that let someone spend the same digital coins twice. Why is this attack concerning? The heist resulted in the loss of $1.1 million worth of the Ethereum Classic digital currency. The digital currency immediately fell in price after the news came out. Coinbase revealed Monday that it identified "a deep chain reorganization" of the Ethereum Classic blockchain (or 51 percent attack of the network), which means that someone controlling the majority of miners on the network (over 50%) had modified the transaction history. After reorganizing the Ethereum blockchain, the attackers were able to what's called "double spend" about 219,500 ETC by recovering previously spent coins from the rightfu

Again some bad news for cryptocurrency users. KICKICO, a blockchain-based initial coin offering (ICO) support platform, has fallen victim to a suspected cyber attack and lost more than 70 million KICK tokens (or KickCoins) worth an estimated $7.7 million. In a statement released on its Medium post on July 26, the company acknowledged the security breach, informing its customers that an unknown attacker managed to gain access to the account of the KICK smart contracts and the tokens of the KICKICO platform on last Thursday at around 9:04 (UTC). KICKICO admitted that the company had no clue about the security breach until and unless several of its customers fell victim and complained about losing KickCoin tokens worth $800,000 from their wallets overnight. However, after investigating, the company found that the total amount of stolen funds was 70,000,000 KickCoin, which, at the current exchange rate, is equivalent to $ 7.7 million. KICKICO reported that suspected attackers

Security researchers have discovered a series of new vulnerabilities in EOS blockchain platform, one of which could allow remote hackers to take complete control over the node servers running the critical blockchain-based applications. EOS is an open source smart contract platform, known as 'Blockchain 3.0,' that allows developers to build decentralized applications over blockchain infrastructure, just like Ethereum. Discovered by Chinese security researchers at Qihoo 360 —Yuki Chen of Vulcan team and Zhiniang Peng of Core security team—the vulnerability is a buffer out-of-bounds write issue which resides in the function used by nodes server to parse contracts. To achieve remote code execution on a targeted node, all an attacker needs to do is upload a maliciously crafted WASM file (a smart contract) written in WebAssembly to the server. As soon as the vulnerable process parser reads the WASM file, the malicious payload gets executed on the node, which could then al

Image Credit: Pixelbay Blockchain startups are cropping up left and right aiming to disrupt existing services and business models. These range from the trivial to potentially game-changing solutions that can revolutionize the internet as we know it. Among those that promise to change the world, most are attempting to reconstruct the entire internet infrastructure into something that is decentralized, secure, scalable, and tokenized. There are also those that aim to solve the most significant problems plaguing the digital world, particularly potentially costly and tedious security issues. We do not lack for dangers, ranging from data breaches to denial-of-service attacks, and other hacks. For the most part, there are capable SaaS and software-defined services that are capable enough in addressing the threats that involve malware and DDoS. However, blockchains offer much much more. The plague of DDoS Distributed denial-of-service or DDoS attacks involve a malicious hacke

As of today — 1 Bitcoin = $7300 USD (Approx 471,000 INR) At the beginning of this year, 1 Bitcoin was approximately equal to $1000, and now it has surged to a new height, marking its market capitalization at over $124 billion. Is it really too late to invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum? For those wondering if they have missed the money-making boat, the answer is—NO, it's never too late to invest. In case you are new to cryptocurrency trading, we have a simple step-by-step guide on our deal store that explains how to invest in cryptocurrencies . However, the blockchain, the revolutionary technology behind Bitcoin and other digital currencies, is not always about cryptocurrencies. Though it is a decentralized public database which ensures that all transactions are properly conducted and recorded, Blockchains can be used for a wide variety of applications, such as for digital identity management, smart assets, digital voting, distributed cloud sto

Etherparty announced Sunday that its ICO (Initial Coin Offering) website selling tokens for a blockchain-based smart contract tool was hacked and the address for sending funds to buy tokens was replaced by a fraudulent address controlled by the hackers. Vancouver-based Etherparty is a smart contract creation tool that allows its users to create smart contracts on the blockchain. Companies like this launch ICO to let them raise funding from multiple sources. Etherparty said the company launched its Fuel token sale on Sunday, October 1 at 9 A.M. PDT, but just 45 minutes, some unknown attackers hacked into its ICO website and replaced the legitimate address by their own, redirecting cryptocurrencies sent by investors into their digital wallet. According to the details released by the Etherparty team, the company detected the hack after just 15 minutes and immediately took its website down for nearly one and half hour to fix the issue, preventing more people from sending funds to

A growing number of enterprises are showing their interest in blockchains , but the underlying software fails to meet key enterprise requirements like performance, confidentiality, governance, and required processing power. However, Microsoft wants to help solve these issues and make it easier for the enterprises to build their networks using any distributed ledger. Microsoft has unveiled a framework called " Coco " — short for " Confidential Consortium " — a new open-source foundation for enterprise blockchain networks . Coco is an Ethereum-based protocol which has been designed to help commercial companies and large-scale enterprises process information on the Ethereum Blockchain with increased privacy. "Coco presents an alternative approach to Ledger construction, giving enterprises the scalability, distributed governance and enhanced confidentiality they need without sacrificing the inherent security and immutability they expect," Mark Russi

All it took was just 3 minutes and ' a simple trick ' for a hacker to steal more than $7 Million worth of Ethereum in a recent blow to the crypto currency market. The heist happened after an Israeli blockchain technology startup project for the trading of Ether, called CoinDash , launched an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), allowing investors to pay with Ethereum and send funds to token sale's smart contact address.. But within three minutes of the ICO launch, an unknown hacker stole more than $7 Million worth of Ether tokens by tricking CoinDash's investors into sending 43438.455 Ether to the wrong address owned by the attacker. How the Hacker did this? CoinDash's ICO posted an Ethereum address on its website for investors to pay with Ethereum and send funds. However, within a few minutes of the launch, CoinDash warned that its website had been hacked and the sending address was replaced by a fraudulent address, asking people not to send Ethereum to the pos

UPDATE: The site is back and working. Blockchain team released a statement via Twitter, which has been added at the end of this article. If you are fascinated with the idea of digital currency, then you might have heard about BlockChain.Info. It's Down! Yes, Blockchain.info, the world's most popular Bitcoin wallet and Block Explorer service, has been down from last few hours, and it's believed that a possible cyber attack has disrupted the site. The site is down at the time of writing, and the web server reports a bad gateway error, with a message on the website that reads: "Looks like our site is down. We're working on it and should be back up soon." With more than 8 million Digital Wallet customers, BlockChain is users' favorite destination to see recent transactions, stats on mined blocks and bitcoin economy charts. A few hours ago, BlockChain team tweeted about the sudden breakdown of the site, saying: "We're researching a DNS

Another day, another bad news for Bitcoin users. A leading Bitcoin information site is warning users that an upcoming version of the Blockchain consolidation software and Bitcoin wallets could most likely be targeted by "state-sponsored attackers." Recently, one of the world's most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitfinex, suffered a major hack that resulted in a loss of around $72 Million worth of Bitcoins . Now, Bitcoin.org, the website that hosts downloads for Bitcoin Core, posted a message on its website on Wednesday warning users that the next version of the Bitcoin Core wallet, one of the most popular bitcoin wallets used to store bitcoins, might be replaced with a malicious version of the software offered by government-backed hackers. Specifically, Chinese bitcoin users and services are encouraged to be vigilant " due to the origin of the attackers. " Bitcoin.org doesn't believe it has sufficient resources to defend against the attack.

Yesterday, BBC broke a story allegedly revealing Craig Wright as the original creator of Bitcoin digital currency Satoshi Nakamoto. However, the highly skeptical cryptographic community is definitely not yet convinced with the technical proofs Wright has yet provided to the media outlets and on his  blog . Now, Wright has promised to provide further evidence for his claim that he is behind the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright's spokesman told BBC that he would " move a coin from an early block " of Bitcoin owned by Nakamoto " in the coming days. " However, the spokesman did not specify a deadline. " So, over the coming days, I will be posting a series of pieces that will lay the foundations for this extraordinary claim, which will include posting independently-verifiable documents and evidence addressing some of the false allegations that have been levelled, and transferring bitcoin from an early block. ", Wright said in a latest blog post

Just last month, DARPA launched a project dubbed "Improv," inviting hackers to transform simple household appliances into deadly weapons . Now, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is finding someone in the private sector to develop a hacker-proof " secure messaging and transaction platform " for the U.S. military. Darpa wants researchers to create a secure messaging and transaction platform that should be accessible via the web browser or standalone native application. The secure messaging app should " separate the message creation, from the transfer (transport) and reception of the message using a decentralized messaging backbone to allow anyone anywhere the ability to send a secure message or conduct other transactions across multiple channels traceable in a decentralized ledger, " agency's  notice explains. In simple words, DARPA aims to create a secure messaging service that not only implements the standard encryption and se

A new machine for Bitcoin Mining called " Approximate Hardware " would make Bitcoin mining easier. Bitcoin had gained tremendous popularity over a few couple of years among the virtual currencies due to its decentralized principle. Mining a single Bitcoin is not an ice cake walk, as it requires an enormous amount of computing power to dig Bitcoins. To overcome this issue and mine Bitcoins faster, security researchers has conducted a study and made a new loophole in the mining process in an effort to mine the Bitcoins easily. How to Mine Bitcoins Faster? A team of Illinois-based researchers led by Indian Scientist, Rakesh Kumar, has designed a new hardware named " Approximate " that could reduce the pain of Bitcoin mining by 30 percent. The proposed system would make use of the faults in the hardware system such as: False Positives where an error is not present but notifies a fake error. False Negatives where an error is present but