#crypto-mining and distributed denial-of-service

[the-hacker-news]

10-Year-Old 'RUBYCARP' Romanian Hacker Group Surfaces with Botnet

The Hacker News : A threat group of suspected Romanian origin called RUBYCARP has been observed maintaining a long-running botnet for carrying out crypto mining, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), and phishing attacks. The group, believed to be active for at least 10 years, employs the botnet for financial gain, Sysdig said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Its primary method of operation http://dlvr.it/T5MQJ3 Posted by : Mohit Kumar ( Hacker )

[hivepro]

EnemyBot, a Mirai-based botnet, is expanding its arsenal by exploiting well-known vulnerabilities in log4j, VMware workspace, Spring Framework, and others. Keksec, also known as Nero and Freakout, is the threat actor behind EnemyBot. Since 2016, this group has been known for crypto-mining and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

[cyphershield2022]

Token BIB excellently passed Armors Labs smart contract audit

The usability of cryptocurrencies is growing despite market challenges in recent months; many projects have come up with new use cases in NFT, DAO and DeFi. Despite this development, the crypto market has recently suffered many attacks, which is scary because no investor will want to invest in technology and lose their money to hackers.

Cryptocurrency investors lost $2 billion due to attacks in 2022. The figure is expected to grow rapidly because crypto investors have lost more funds in recent months compared to the beginning of the year. Blockchain companies need to address security issues if cryptocurrency adoption is to grow in the coming years.

Companies are working on ways to protect users' investments from attack; one of the companies that work on that is the BIB exchange. The company is aware that the codes have to be secure despite the many features that allow users to earn DEX and CEX profits, capital gains from asset appreciation, NFT minting, and virtual entertainment utilities.

Smart Contract Auditing is one of the ways that cryptocurrency-based companies can ensure that hackers do not detect vulnerability in the code in front of them. BIB exchange token contracts have recently passed the audit of one of the most trusted blockchain security firms, Armors Labs. Armors Labs tested the BIB token smart contract for common vulnerabilities such as Denial of Service, Trademark Tampering, block time and Short Address Attack.

The contracts had been approved as clean by the Armors Labs team and safe for users to deposit, stake, and trade their tokens seamlessly. A one-way BIB Exchange that protects its consumers' money is Armors Labs Audit.

The company has also employed other measures to ensure user funds are safe. One of the methods is that all users go through an extra layer of security before they can withdraw their funds, ensuring that hackers who gain access to your dashboard cannot withdraw funds. The company also ensures that all users have access to 24/7 support on Telegram, where they can report suspicious activity, which will be reviewed by its security team.

BIB Exchange has also hired the best security team that constantly monitors the network to ensure that user funds are safe. The company is also aware of attacks such as social engineering where hackers can obtain your information by posing as BIB support agents. The company has moved to prevent such attacks by educating users on best practices to protect their wallets. They provide educational tools to enable you best practices to secure your wallets.

The BIB token is issued by the BIB exchange, which trades under the symbol BIB. The corporation initially distributed the token during the BSC network's ICO launch. The numerous benefits of the BIB token include holding BIB in CEX and DEX wallets, delegating to the node, and retaining the token dividend.

BIB also offers many use cases, including the minting of NFTs for entertainment purposes, allowing staking, which means that $BIB can enjoy dividends in BUSD. $BIB holders can also mine tokens through delegation, and a significant benefit is that $BIB holders can participate in GameFi in the BIB Meta ecosystem.

BIB is great because as well as ensuring that user funds are safe from hackers, it also ensures that investors benefit from holding and staking the tokens. Today is the best time to invest in the future of cryptocurrencies by buying BIB tokens.

[sandyzakk]

Compare the three multi-blockchain networks of Polkadot and Avalanche. Are they really better than Bitcoin and Ethereum?

How do we ensure liquidity flows efficiently across chains, rather than being isolated within a particular chain? How will those open organizations that operate across chains prevent the emergence of multi-chain whales and ensure fair distribution of wealth and power?

The promise of de-Ethereum is being challenged by the centralization of Bitcoin, the first encrypted internet, Bridge Smart Contract Development Services the bulk performance of Ethereum, the validity and efficiency of the Ethereum version. Performance issues at the moment, but newer projects Cosmos, Polkadot, and Avalanche have released infrastructure with superior capabilities.

Their operation is horizontally scalable through a broad multi-co-network model, specific to a certain block of the application and participating when needed. different influences.

We will discuss them one by one in this article. Both are an internet of blockchains to reach the scale of the web that can create tens of thousands a day (even today) and achieve their millions of active users, the center of the 3 visions of user ownership and control . Bitcoin Bitcoin’s Pandora’s Box, the idea that it became “gold” in popularity over time, has become common sense.

However, Bitcoin, Ethereum variants have these key issues that hinder mass adoption of the crypto network. We will first see the problem and then use this point to compare the new generation of blockchain platforms.

1. High-efficiency network operators need to ensure that network participants effectively implement consensus. Fault Tolerance (Byzantine Fault Tolerance).

Consent that allows participation in an open network of activities, simultaneously using the same stance against multiple identities (Sybil attack) is handled through an admission method called Proof of Work (PoW) (pioneered by Cynthia Dwork in 1992, in Request The participants harnessed the enormous computing power, which empowered the planet, and also gave some power companies.

Pre-determined, secure items are computed over the network, with new proof-of-stake (PoS) implementations that require economic infusions to validate participants in order to use them. In fact, similar economies of scale are available for Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of Work (PoW): the cost of validating nodes grows from OPEX (the operating cost of the mine) to CAPEX (the cost of capital).

2. Delayed adoption of Nakamoto consensus in Bitcoin, Ethereum and their variants, which requires waiting for multiple new blocks to be created to secure transactions. Therefore, the Nakamoto consensus chain has high availability. Due to the long transaction chain, the finality is guaranteed, the transaction speed is reduced, and it needs to wait quickly.

To improve transaction finality, the Practical Byting Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus set used by many blockchain projects has its own weaknesses, including how large a validator can be without slowing down the network, and when it has normal operation. Security in terms of time or activity.

3. Calculation results : In computer network transactions, the performance calculation of the network can be optimized, it can determine the nature of the transaction object, because it can carry out the nature of the task, because it can determine the transaction volume. Refers to simple different or different complex computing power; the computing power they require.

In order to achieve the overall goal, the project adopts high performance indicators or vertical expansion, that is, the performance calculation of nodes and the optimization software of computing nodes, that is, the horizontal expansion strategy is adopted, that is, parallel processing is carried out through the network part.

4. Transactions Transactions : Blockchains must find a way to limit their execution, otherwise the network of nodes running the blockchain is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack (DOS). To enforce this limitation, Bitcoin uses a very limited scripting language, and Ethereum charges transaction fees based on gas metering performed by smart contracts.

In this problem, whatever is done in the transaction thus is conveniently done in the transaction, they all process the result conveniently on one network, and when the network adds time, even for simple operations, the transaction fee will be Added, use the same perks of being someone with a big wallet. Fees are paid to miners as an incentive to prioritize transactions.

Bitcoin will serve as a measure of widespread post-trade public offerings, but in Ethereum they are the only price, their only project cost. Ethereum is also starting to burn costs, so as network activity grows, all token holders are reaping the increase in scarcity.

5. The degree of de -bitcoin is opposite to the degree of generalization, due to the centralization of mining pools, the degree of centralization that actually occurs in Bitcoin and Ethereum is very low (by November 2021, 90% of the mining power of 11 Bitcoins will be removed. Centralized) mining pool control, 90% of Ethereum’s computing power is controlled by 16 mining pools).

With the increased love and love that will be among the difficult masses below, we run, unite, and let us succeed in the minds of many workers. Various solutions to solve this problem.

6. With how the blockchain project of the network distributes a kind of common distribution chain (token chain) on the blockchain, the security, fairness, ecological development system and the shared chain of the distributed chain are many dependencies around the city Accompanying the project: Along with the network of miners, join the token reward center of this project, and it will be safely decomposed on this network, thus attracting more people to use it.

However, as the network continues to grow, more and more miners come to protect the cost of success. The distribution of tokens or power is centralized and the core is concentrated on a few entities running miners.

Ethereum employs a different strategy: how many tokens do they prepay, remove the total supply chain and funding, give some of the tokens to early investors and sellers, allocate some of the tokens to early investors and sellers, use To distribute the money to the donors and start to become miners like the new standard coin model over time.

Ethereum soon issued a pool of tokens concentrated in several mining pools, with the largest holder holding the console. Ultimately, in a network of circulation over time, circulation defines who has power: the power of blocks (ordering, accepting or reviewing transactions), the power to fork the network, the power to decide protocol upgrades, and the power to invest and The right to pledge the application.

7 : Protocol network does not affect all user changes. Whether or not they propose improvements is significantly influenced by these agreements and future ones. In Bitcoin Ethereum, improvement proposals lead to changes and parameter changes, core core communities, discussion decisions, implementation and application.

Miners have an interest in pursuing a network that differs from the majority, going in a different direction and starting a new network, then actively forking on the network. Additionally, alternatives are emerging if R&D funding allocations are typically managed by a central foundation, while DAOs (Decentralized Organizations) are clustered around community funding negotiations.

Because they have no real token holders or rights holders in decision making, because they do not express professionalism, interest or awareness in decision making. than, they might also have a little impact, since it’s usually token voting.

The new currency adopts fair and equitable, Cross chain bridge development more generational de-time chain supervision (i.e. participation in voting), supervision scheme, supervision scheme to supervise in a more equitable way, voting appointment, supervision committee, voting institution, supervisory committee, voting institution, supervisory committee tickets) and off-chain signaling mechanisms, this is changing.

These issues are the real application of the continued adoption of the network, and its decentralization and ease of use.

Existing gang users continue to use Ethereum and Bitcoin because they are unaware of the problems; companies and investors continue to use them because they want to be liquid; those who are early entrants or “primitive black” because they There are great benefits. But another world is possible. Every day, Ethereum has an average of 500,000 daily active users, while popular web apps like Twitter have 200 million daily active users (400 times that of Ethereum), and Facebook has nearly 2 billion daily active users (4,000 times that of Ethereum) active user) .

The new version of Ethereum rolls out a wide range of solutions and its interim solution is currently meeting the expanding demand, but it is currently meeting the growing demand, Polkadot, Avalanche (mainnet 2019 2020) re-launch is right The promise of a truly decentralized internet.

Ethereum as new version of the EVM ecosystem

The new mechanics of Ethereum have been happening through new mechanics and the invention of the blockchain platform for new mechanics ever since. Ethereum’s new Proof of Stake, which publishes the network version as a synchronized shard, (data and results calculated by total Ethereum users). Running the same allocator will be generated by verification blocks to different virtual machines, activities on multiple different chains, and chain synchronization of Beacon.

Synchronous replication means replication, i.e. testing consistent database copies across all servers. data for expansion.

The same speed, cost, and scaling issues start to arise when synchronizing or building a network to deploy a shard of the same (eg DeFi shard) to get more usage than the other shards. A new problem is efficiently synchronizing data between shards.

The transition to the new version in Ethereum’s time will be fully completed around this year, but at this time the Laer2 solutions — Rollup (Optimistic, zk Sync), Plasma and state channels — have been rolled out for the growing Ethereum usage needs to provide efficiency and speed.

Paradoxically, the layer 2 central trust model may have an intermediary operator for the purpose of de-censorship and counter-censorship, i.e. having multiple operators (Polygon is made with Tendermint and runs on multiple validators, the goal of Matter Labs) is Authenticator network using zkSync)

It’s like having your own codename (such as MATIC’s blockchain, and eventually adding a second trading center) to quote issues.

Blockchain Design

Recently, Ethereum adopted a new strategy called llup-centric roadmap, which positions the Ethereum Layer1 as data validity and the Layer2 project as computational formula. And share the base layer of security with Rollup.

Ethereum is computing the EVM blockchain ecosystem, is it a game of multiple Rollups collectively occupying the dominant storage position or a Rollup (see Vik Buter’s article Endgame Strategy). Adopting Reality, and therefore suitable for such emerging market blockchain designs, blockchains can deliver data to or from other blockchains.

A general model for this strategy was developed by Celestia and the EigenLayr. Additionally, Ethereum’s new strategy is similar to the shared security model already used in Polkadot and Avalanche.

Then, since Comos, Polka, Avalanche are on at least one of their bridges to the on-chain connection of the EVM La chain, they are sometimes connected in a bucket like “Layer2”, which these projects usually call themselves because they provide The foundation of the Layer1 blockchain for interconnection.

Cosmos, Polkadot, Avalanche

Cosmos Polkadot, Avalanche need to scale horizontally with specific applications where the blockchains have different virtual machines and are interoperable with other chains.

These facility platforms give you the ability to customize your blockchain hub, and therefore provide a design-by-design for your application to run your project space and chain instead of your own set of smart contracts. Three basic advantages:

Performance Isolation: Isolation of your chain from other chains ensures that the experience is not affected by the network for a specific activity, so it provides better performance needs and you can use when users bridge other chains.

Fees that are predictable and you can customize: Fees on shared permissionless networks are not controlled. High activity on the network for some applications may increase arbitrary charges for your application. Have your custom structure and don't use ATOM, DOT applications, and can use applications to calculate costs between your applications. Spirit.

Customizable Validation: Custom validator rules and requirements focus your chain on its domain-specific needs. Your chain's validators can be jurisdiction compliant (e.g. GDPR in the EU), can have hardware requirements for performance, or have some kind of proof of being a validator.

As well as these latest networks are also connected to Ethereum, a bridge between Bitcoin is being developed, and to fully realize the vision of the Internet of Blockchains.

For example, Cosmos, Avalanche have their key differences at the protocol level (e.g., Polkadot, consensus mechanisms, secure economic processing) that affect platform functionality (its, chain communication, token differences, types of applications between economies) and how the network scales Example (validator participation, constant release).

The investor comparisons below help those, entrepreneurs, researchers, and those considering next-generation infrastructure understand their differential development and talent.

consensus mechanism

Securely maintained and consistent application state on an open network is achieved through faulty consensus mechanisms. While performing, the information is not expressed or there are opposing actors (Byzantine, the network shows faulty and valid consensus.

Practical Party Call Communication (PBFT), which was decided to be used in Cosmos and Polkadot, allows all parties to participate and therefore determines where all the networks participate. It has low latency and fast finality, but it cannot achieve its participants in all participants in a global open network, because the load rate on each validator node increases exponentially with the increase of validation work.

Over time, widely disseminated low-sex speech, it builds a very slow and scalable network to spread.

Cosmos, due to go live in March 2019, but the mainnet must use Tendermint PBFT message consensus while providing finality for both parties. .

Polkadot is the mainnet launched in May 2020. The blockchain is produced and finalized by consensus: BABE (a variant of Ouroboros Praos) creates sub-blocks, and the PBFT variant is completed. Hybrid consensus provides the complexity of secondary message passing to a certain extent.

Avalanche went live in September 2020 and uses Avalanche consensus, a unique mechanism that combines duplicate voting between validator nodes (snowballs) and commit voting in a directed acyclic (DAG) that is linear error chain. Since Avalanche has consensus, there is a common message propagation complexity, allowing for low and large participation. rate is extremely low.

 Validator entry criteria

Allowing participation in the consensus of an open network while preventing the same action against multiple (Sybil identity attacks) is handled by a proof-of-work (PoW) or proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism.

Like all new projects, Cosmos, Polkadot, Avalanche use Proof of Stake because of its energy efficiency and ability to provide design space. There are also projects on these networks that implement a lighter proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism for a fair generation distribution mechanism.

transaction delay

Cosmos can achieve transaction finality in 6-7 seconds.

Polkadot as a whole can achieve finality in 12-60 seconds, with block creation and finality being separate.

Avalanche can be the failure rate within the pole. It achieves transactional finality like Bitcoin and is low finality.

Calculate output

The complexity of the machines and network architectures used on the virtual network network blockchain that Cosmos, Polkadot are building. What really matters is how much the network can grow, and their choice for cross-chain economic security matters. Build a cross chain bridge

Trading price

Cosmos, Polkadot, Avalanche make a network with its own network, each with a fee mechanism customized as the network state grows.

Each Cosmos chain has a customizable fee mechanism.

Polkadot has a customizable fee mechanism per chain. Fees are recalculated using a weighting system. The cost of burning each chain is optional.

Avaya has different types of primary fees per chain, which are fixed fees for network fees. Harvest.

[heliolendingau]

The Differences Between Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and chief executive of the crypto lending platform, Celsius Network, recently announced a change concerning Dogecoin. He speculates that it will transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) protocol to proof-of-stake (PoS) within the next two years. Switching protocols means different features and abilities for the system.

For those who are not particularly savvy to these protocols, you may be wondering what makes them distinct from one another. On top of that, you want some context for this lending platform’s potential transition.

Proof-of-Work

Proof-of-work refers to a system that needs an insignificant yet feasible amount of effort to avert any malicious or trivial uses of computing power. Examples include sending spam emails or launching various attacks, like denial-of-service (DoS). PoW creates the basis of Bitcoin, as well as many other cryptocurrencies, which enables a consensus that is secure and decentralized.

The best way to look at PoW is by seeing how it functions in relation to the Bitcoin network. This cryptocurrency is underpinned by blockchain technology, which is a distributed ledger that contains a record of all bitcoin transactions. They are arranged in sequential “blocks,” hence the name “blockchain.” This way, users are unable to spend any of their holdings more than once. Prevention of tampering requires the ledger to be public, or “distributed.” An altered version will face rejection by other users.

Users detect any kind of tampering with hashes, which are long strings of numbers serving as PoW. When a given set of data is put through a hash function (SHA-256 is what Bitcoin uses), it will only produce one hash. However, the “avalanche effect” makes it so that even the smallest change to the original data will create a completely unrecognizable hash.

Proof-of-Stake

According to the proof-of-stake concept, a person can mine or validate block transactions based on the number of coins they hold. This means that the more coins a miner owns, the more mining power they possess.

The PoS is an alternative to PoW that aims to tackle inherent issues with the latter. Altcoins primarily use the PoS concept. As soon as a transaction is initiated, the data is fitted into a block with a 1-megabyte capacity before being duplicated across numerous computers or nodes on the network. The nodes are the blockchain’s administrative body and corroborate the legitimacy of each blocks’ transactions.

A large amount of computing power is required for mining to properly operate on different cryptographic calculations. With it, different computational challenges can be unlocked. The computing power translates into an abundance of electricity and power that is essential for the PoW. PoS addresses this by applying mining power to the proportion of coins that the miner is holding. Therefore, rather than utilize energy as a means to solve PoW puzzles, a PoS miner is limited to mining a certain percentage of transactions reflective of their ownership stake.

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https://heliolending.com/

[margeneglossop]

How Decide An E-Currency Exchanger

Crypto Trading Coin Platform - https://cryptotradingcoin.net/. I have received numerous emails asking me how sure they are if this is simply not a software to steal their password and liberty reserve account number.YOU CANT BE SURE SO Reasonably TO Every body IS THAT SINCE OPENING LR ACCT IS FREE OPEN A AND Make use of the SOFTWARE In addition to it. 12/26: Ryan Eriquezzo, WSOP Circuit Champion, makes an inspirational retreat to the show as he nears the conclusion of his self-imposed 6 month hiatus from poker. There is much realize from this young poker star can be quickly proving to be wise beyond his months or even years. [Visit Website] [Download MP3]. Although really seriously . simplified, it is basically the system works out. You work for shares in a block if complete find a percent of the block in accordance with the regarding workers alongside you, less fees. Utilizing this technique will enable you to get money. Silk Road was apparently down temporarily, so the detractors were quick guilty Bitcoin. However the site seemed to be the target of a set of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which has nothing to carry out the economics among the situation. Cryptocurrency 12/3: Adam and Chris discuss their recent results, Tourney Tracks, Chris Moorman's recent win, the Reid Kyl bill and a little more. [Visit Website] [Download MP3]. The human mind is such that much more even probably the most acceptable facts seem unacceptable. Brains are only prone to the acceptance on the old. Rare is the intellect that accepts the Bitcoin Mining and the novel. Coins and paper money to be able to in use almost since, well not since dinosaurs and stone aged men clubbing women stone cold on their heads for wives, but at least since a person's race became an intelligent species, to say minimal. There will be a page that shows you many bitcoins are currently in your wallet. Know that bitcoins could be broken up into smaller pieces, so you may see a decimal with no shortage of zeros after it. (Interesting note, 0.00000001 is one Satoshi, named after the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin).

[tradinggatorcom]

Basics About How You Can Make Money With Cryptocurrency Mining

A recent high profile article on the Financial Times website titled “Ripple and cryptos”, suggests that Ripple is the upcoming replacement for Visa and MasterCard. The article goes into great detail outlining how the network will operate and illustrates how this new payment scheme is predicted to be more secure than most traditional forms of financial transaction. Is Ripple a scam? In my opinion, no. There are many reasons why I think ripple is the perfect replacement for traditional money transfer methods such as MasterCard and Visa.

A cryptocoin is a virtual asset designed to function like a currency, where user coin ownership documents are kept in a public ledger based on a secure computer network in a form of secure computer database with strong encryption. This is to prevent third party tampering with this information for illicit purposes. Many people are excited by the prospects of using cryptosporters such as ripple and other currencies to avoid the problems associated with money back transactions in traditional currencies.

One of the biggest attractions of using a virtual currency like ripple is that you never need to hold or use real money to purchase any of these currencies. Most of the leading cryptocurrencies are already implemented in software, which is commonly referred to as alt coins. The appeal of an alt coin is that it is significantly more resistant to theft than the leading cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Dash. These currencies are implemented with a lightweight client software that allows anyone to transact without having to know or understand the complex cryptography required for proper operation of the protocol. This is one of the biggest attractions of this technology.

Unlike normal cryptocoin systems, however, there is no centralised ledger system which records all transaction details for every coin. The major problem with this is that it makes it impossible to trace how a particular cryptocoin is being used. There are two major types of Cryptocurrency which include the original ledger system, which are called theblockchain, and the decentralised ledger system, which is called theproof-of-work (POW). The original system is the backbone of all successful Cryptocurrences. However, since it is impossible to monitor the transfer of all relevant information across the entire network, this type of system quickly becomes vulnerable to attack from both external and internal forces.

One of the most dangerous forms of attack is the declaration of bankruptcy. All previous Cryptocurrences, including the bitcoin protocol, are based on proof-of-work systems. It is impossible to change the previous ledger, so all previous bitcoins are essentially stored on computers that have been hacked. Any digital token is stored in exactly the same way, even though the owner may change the pin number, create a new address and start a new career. This is why most Cryptocurrences, including ripple and cryptosporters like Bit redistribution, have very careful security measures built into their systems to avoid this risk.

Another major issue is scalability, which is the ability to increase the capacity of a distributed ledger without affecting the overall monetary supply. Since the whole system is based on mathematical proofs, increasing the size of the ledger will result in an exponential increase in currency, which can easily be controlled by any central authority. The problem is that as the network gets bigger, it starts to cause forks in the track, which makes the network vulnerable to malicious attacks.

One major problem is the use of force to change the overall financial supply. During the last few years, the value of bitcoins has declined dramatically, and many people fear that it will overtake the US dollar as the worldwide pre-eminent currency. Attacks on the value of the cryptocurrences, including deliberate attacks on the backbone of the system and denial of service attacks, are not uncommon. If a nation state deliberately uses its banking system to cause a currency to lose value, then this is an act of Cryptocurrency Theft and could be considered a crime.

While there are some serious issues with the way that many Cryptocurrences operate today, there is also an opportunity to make a profit in the field of Cryptocurrency Mining. When you mine Cryptocurrencies, you are actually creating new economic wealth. With more competition in the field, it is not hard to imagine that the value of various Cryptocurrencies will rise, which would result in an increase in their popularity and value. This would result in even more demand for the existing supply of bitcoins and therefore, higher prices.

The post Basics About How You Can Make Money With Cryptocurrency Mining appeared first on TradingGator.

source https://tradinggator.com/basics-about-how-you-can-make-money-with-cryptocurrency-mining/

[tipco613]

New Post has been published on http://cryptonewsuniverse.com/five-years-of-ethereum-from-a-teenage-dream-to-a-38b-blockchain/

Five Years of Ethereum: From a Teenage Dream to a 38B Blockchain

Five Years of Ethereum: From a Teenage Dream to a $38B Blockchain

How far has the Ethereum blockchain come in the five years since its inception? We explore key developments, changes and challenges.

It would seem that five years is a relatively short time for an information technology company,

but Ethereum has made colossal progress during this time, growing from its own initial coin offering project to the largest blockchain platform, running about 2,000 decentralized applications. Today, the market capitalization of its native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), is worth $38 billion — larger than Ford Motor Company and the popular app Snapchat. Not only that, but the value of Ether has seen a 121-fold increase over the period of the network’s existence. While the whole team is preparing for the transition to the proof-of-stake consensus algorithm ahead of the upcoming Berlin upgrade, Cointelegraph recalls the striking changes that have occurred to the platform over the five years since its launch, and the failures that have only toughened its resolve.

2013/2014: An idea to an $18 million crowdsale 

Ethereum was invented by Vitalik Buterin, a Canadian programmer of Russian descent. It was 2013, and Buterin was just an 18-year-old teenager, but his idea found a lively response in the global blockchain community. Later, Gavin Wood, a British computer programmer, proved the possibility of creating the system invented by Buterin and described the basic principles of its operation in the Ethereum “Yellow Paper.” Together with the first members of the Ethereum team, they launched a crowdsale and raised $18 million for the project’s development.

2015: Network launch and exchange listing

The first version of the Ethereum cryptocurrency protocol, called Frontier, was launched on July 30, 2015. But the security level the system boasted back then was far from what Ethereum is today. The launch of Frontier marked an important milestone in the history of the network, after which the developers immediately started working with smart contracts and creating DApps on the real blockchain. The first existing historical record of Ether’s price is from Aug. 7, 2015, when ETH was added to the Kraken crypto exchange at $2.77 per coin. Over its first three days of trading, its price dropped to a demeaning $0.68, most likely under the influence of rapid sales by early investors. In the second half of the year, droves of crypto enthusiasts rushed to learn what they could about Ethereum. A particularly significant contribution to its popularization was made by the DEVCON-1 developer conference, which was held from Nov. 9 to 13. The event sparked intense discussions on the development of Ethereum, with the participation of representatives from IBM, Microsoft and UBS.

2016: The DAO, hackers and Ethereum split

At the beginning of 2016, the price of Ether rose rapidly, fueled by news of the upcoming launch of a network protocol with a more stable version: Homestead. As a result, ETH reached its first serious high of $15 per coin on March 13, with the platform’s market cap exceeding the boastful $1 billion mark. On March 14, Homestead went live, which made its blockchain officially secure through new protocols and network changes (EIP-2, EIP-7 and EIP-8), making future updates possible. More specifically, the network protection became based on mining, which was planned only for the initial stage of development with subsequent transition to PoS with a hybrid model at an intermediate stage. At the same time, exuberant requirements for video memory acted as protection against the use of ASIC miners.

The next event, which brought the price of Ether to its highest value that year — $21 — was the widespread media coverage of the dizzying success of The DAO project, which raised more than 12 million ETH ($150 million at the time ) in May. The DAO — an acronym for decentralized autonomous organization — was one of the pioneers of the upcoming ICO era and chose Ethereum as its launchpad to raise investments. However, on June 16, using a vulnerability in The DAO’s code, unknown hackers stole about $60 million in ETH from the project. News of the attack sliced the price of ETH in half to $11. Buterin offered to return the stolen funds by conducting a hard fork to restore the network to its pre-attack state. Following a controversial hard fork held on July 20, the network split into two: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. On Sept. 22, Ethereum suffered another blow: The network was subjected to a distributed denial-of-service attack, significantly slowing its operations. The news became an impetus for the beginning of a local downtrend in the curbed price, which began consolidating in the $7–$9 range by the end of the year. Two unplanned hard forks were then carried out to improve the resilience of the network and rectify the consequences of the DDoS attack.

2017: ICO boom 

Ether’s price experienced a meteoric rise at the start of 2017 as the cryptocurrency was added to the eToro platform on Feb. 23. Around the same time, the number of unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin network had reached 200,000, causing an increasing number of crypto investors and miners to opt for Ether as an alternative investment. On May 6, the price of ETH set a new bar of $95 per coin. The popularity of Ethereum grew rapidly in the crypto community and among DApp developers. The initial coin offering hype also contributed to the increased demand for Ether, as thousands of projects opted to fundraise in ETH. By Sept. 1, the price of Ethereum had almost reached a whopping $400, but news of China banning ICOs and crypto trading quickly slashed it to nearly $220. The price gradually recovered by mid-October after the release of the Byzantium network upgrade, which took place on Sept. 18. Along with the growth of the ICO bubble, in which Ether was still the main means of payment, ETH reached nearly $800 by the end of the year.

2018: Ethereum at $1,400 and a bearish trend

The beginning of 2018 turned out to be even more successful for Ethereum than the previous one. On Jan. 13, the price of Ether reached its all-time high of around $1,400. But the ICO rush, which had triggered the rapid growth of Ethereum’s price in 2017, came to an end. Throughout 2018, its echoes played a cruel joke on Ether as thousands of ICO projects sold their savings, meaning that ETH dropped even faster than the rest of the market. In early September, news of the Constantinople hard fork — expected in November — slowed the drop in the price and injected positive sentiment into the community. However, the network upgrade was delayed. Influenced by inter-bearish sentiments on the crypto market and pending updates, the price fell to $85, dropping from the second-largest to the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind XRP.

2019: Technical works, update delays and popularity of DAOs

Many aspects spiraled out of the control of developers over the year as they were actively engaged in conducting technical work on the network. Meanwhile, the community lost count of the number of upgrades carried out. In January, the technical roadmap gained clarity as difficult engineering problems were solved and the Ethereum development community continued to grow. DeFi became the largest sector within Ethereum, and the market saw early signs of growth in gaming and decentralized autonomous organizations. At the beginning of 2019, the only DeFi protocol with significant funds was MakerDAO, which had a total of 1.86 million ETH ($260.4 million at the time). The playing field became much more diverse by the end of the year when new participants rushed into the industry.

On Feb. 28, the Constantinople hard fork took place on the Ethereum network, which prepared it for the transition to the Casper PoS protocol and the abolition of the previous mining model. However, the eighth upgrade, called Istanbul — which initially had been scheduled for Dec. 4 — was delayed and activated on the Ethereum mainnet on Dec. 8. Among the main objectives of Istanbul were ensuring the compatibility of the Ethereum blockchain with the anonymous Zcash (ZEC) cryptocurrency and increasing the scalability of the network through SNARKs and STARKs zero-knowledge-proof protocols. In addition, the update made it difficult to carry out denial-of-service attacks on the network due to the change in the cost of gas needed for launching operating codes.

The progress of Ethereum 2.0 laid the foundation for the world’s largest corporations to start using the Ethereum blockchain. In July, Samsung released a software kit for Ethereum developers, six months after it was revealed that the development of its new phone included a built-in Ethereum wallet. Another large partnership involved internet browser Opera, which had launched an Ethereum-supported Android wallet at the end of 2018 and announced a built-in Ethereum wallet for iOS users in early 2019. Meanwhile, Microsoft continued its involvement with the Ethereum ecosystem. In May, the company released the Azure Blockchain Development Kit to support Ethereum development. In October, it backed a tokenized incentive system from the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance for use within enterprise consortiums. And in November, it launched Azure Blockchain Tokens, a service that lets enterprises issue their own tokens on Ethereum.

2020: The DeFi boom and PoS 

In the first half of 2020, Ethereum — famous for its numerous conferences and meetups — was forced to postpone all activity due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, the team managed to make significant progress in solving the scalability issue, with the launch of the final Ethereum 2.0 testnet scheduled for Aug. 4. The developers hope that once the upgrade is complete, the Ethereum network will become faster, cheaper and more scalable without compromising decentralization and network flexibility. Meanwhile, the blockchain network continues to grow, as activity in the decentralized finance market has increased significantly. According to Dapp.com, the daily volume of value transferred via DeFi applications reached an all-time high of $1.8 billion on July 2. During the second quarter, a record $4.9 billion was moved through DeFi applications — a 67% growth when compared with the previous quarter — while the number of active users of Ethereum applications reached 1,258,527, an increase of 97%.

Article Produced By Julia Magas

Julia is a researcher/journalist who covers the latest trends in finance and technology. Since 2013, she has been researching the cryptocurrency market and coordinating international conferences. Julia’s works are featured by popular fintech magazines, including Investing, SeekingAlpha and Bitcoinist, where she interviewed representatives from MIT, Indeed, Ethereum and more. She's trading some stocks and digital currencies for experimental purposes and hunting for the most interesting, cutting-edge technologies' use cases in investing and finance.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/five-years-of-ethereum-from-a-teenage-dream-to-a-38b-blockchain

[uscitizenclothing]

New Monero Botnet Looks Like Last Year's Outlaw Attack

There’s another Monero mining botnet that’s targeting China. Or maybe it’s one we’ve seen before. Bloggers steeped in the hacker-verse recently exposed a URL spreading a botnet that looks suspiciously like one unleashed by the Outlaw hacking group last year. The Outlaw outfit — a name coined by its discoverers at Trend Micro, who translated “the Romanian word haiduc, the hacking tool the group primarily uses” — is infamous for its previous release of a Perl-based shellbot that infiltrates through weaknesses in the Internet of Things. The new attack, uncovered by Trend Micro’s honeypot security systems, has been restricted to computers based in China so far. The malware is spread through a malicious URL which bundles in a Monero-mining script and a backdoor-based exploit. Trend Micro estimates that hackers have used crypto-jacking to mine $250,000 per month in Monero. The Outlaw botnet uses a brute force attack and Secure Shell (SSH) exploit to give the attackers remote access over victim’s systems. A more detailed report of Outlaw’s previous attack showed that once the attackers have access, the malware executes commands to download and install the cryptocurrency miner payload. Additionally, if the malware detects cryptocurrency miners already installed on the system, it will delete them to reduce competition for system resources. The security experts also noted that the backdoor component is also capable of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks which would allow the cybercriminals to monetize their botnet not only through mining, but by offering DDoS-for-hire services. However, because the scripts haven’t been activated, Trend Micro believes the hackers are still in the testing and development phase. They suggest the malware may be laying dormant until future editions of the botnet are released. This comment lead TheNextWeb to speculate whether the botnet has mined any cryptocurrency or made any successful attacks yet. Monero image via CoinDesk Archives Source link Read the full article

[cryptoquicknews-blog]

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/gCfGwE

Trend Micro: Outlaw Hacking Group’s Botnet Is Now Spreading a Monero Miner

This post was originally published here

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro claims to have detected a web address spreading a botnet featuring a monero (XMR) mining component alongside a backdoor. The malware was described on Trend Micro’s official blog on June 13.

Per the report, the firm attributes the malware to Outlaw Hacking Group, as the techniques employed are almost the same used in its previous operations. The software in question also holds Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) capabilities, “allowing the cybercriminals to monetize their botnet through cryptocurrency mining and by offering DDoS-for-hire services.”

Trend Micro also believes that the creators of the malware in question are still testing and developing it, since it contained some scripts that were included, but not executed. The firm’s telemetry also reportedly detected infection attempts in China.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier this month, Trend Micro had confirmed that attackers have been exploiting a vulnerability in the Oracle WebLogic server to install monero mining malware while using certificate files to obfuscate the endeavor.

In May, Firefox Quantum, the latest version of open-source internet browser Firefox, announced a new privacy toggle that protects against cryptojacking. Users can now toggle an opt-in feature that purportedly blocks would-be cryptojackers from taking advantage of spare computing power to mine cryptocurrencies.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/gCfGwE

[heliolendingau]

The Differences Between Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and chief executive of the crypto lending platform, Celsius Network, recently announced a change concerning Dogecoin. He speculates that it will transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) protocol to proof-of-stake (PoS) within the next two years. Switching protocols means different features and abilities for the system.

For those who are not particularly savvy to these protocols, you may be wondering what makes them distinct from one another. On top of that, you want some context for this lending platform’s potential transition.

Proof-of-Work

Proof-of-work refers to a system that needs an insignificant yet feasible amount of effort to avert any malicious or trivial uses of computing power. Examples include sending spam emails or launching various attacks, like denial-of-service (DoS). PoW creates the basis of Bitcoin, as well as many other cryptocurrencies, which enables a consensus that is secure and decentralized.

The best way to look at PoW is by seeing how it functions in relation to the Bitcoin network. This cryptocurrency is underpinned by blockchain technology, which is a distributed ledger that contains a record of all bitcoin transactions. They are arranged in sequential “blocks,” hence the name “blockchain.” This way, users are unable to spend any of their holdings more than once. Prevention of tampering requires the ledger to be public, or “distributed.” An altered version will face rejection by other users.

Users detect any kind of tampering with hashes, which are long strings of numbers serving as PoW. When a given set of data is put through a hash function (SHA-256 is what Bitcoin uses), it will only produce one hash. However, the “avalanche effect” makes it so that even the smallest change to the original data will create a completely unrecognizable hash.

Proof-of-Stake

According to the proof-of-stake concept, a person can mine or validate block transactions based on the number of coins they hold. This means that the more coins a miner owns, the more mining power they possess.

The PoS is an alternative to PoW that aims to tackle inherent issues with the latter. Altcoins primarily use the PoS concept. As soon as a transaction is initiated, the data is fitted into a block with a 1-megabyte capacity before being duplicated across numerous computers or nodes on the network. The nodes are the blockchain’s administrative body and corroborate the legitimacy of each blocks’ transactions.

A large amount of computing power is required for mining to properly operate on different cryptographic calculations. With it, different computational challenges can be unlocked. The computing power translates into an abundance of electricity and power that is essential for the PoW. PoS addresses this by applying mining power to the proportion of coins that the miner is holding. Therefore, rather than utilize energy as a means to solve PoW puzzles, a PoS miner is limited to mining a certain percentage of transactions reflective of their ownership stake.

https://heliolending.com/

[coin-river-blog]

Technology & Security

The Lightning Network has been touted as the solution to the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network’s scalability problem for years now. Over the last few months, the Lightning Network has shown growth but there are still significant concerns about centralization, routing issues, and creating a usable mainstream-friendly interface. The ongoing joke that the network is “18 months away” continues, and on Wednesday researchers published a topological analysis of the network which highlights how the project is “structurally weak against rational adversaries.”

Also Read: Embracing Utility in 2019: Unreliable Crypto Networks Will Lose to Hyperbitcoinization

‘A Small Central Clique and a Loosely Connected Periphery’

At the Breaking Bitcoin conference on Sept. 9, 2017, when an audience member asked how much longer the Lightning Network (LN) will be, the ultimate answer was still “18 months.” Ever since then that timeline has been an inside joke to both LN defectors and even proponents. A recent study stemming from members of Eötvös Loránd University explains that there are still significant issues with the LN protocol. In order to review the LN, researchers Seres Istvan Andras, Laszlo Gulyas, Daniel A. Nagy, and Peter Bur published a seven-page topological analysis of the network on Wednesday.

The researchers from Eötvös Loránd University believe topological studies are needed to better understand the Lightning Network.

A topological analysis uses applied mathematics and data from topological extraction, and many analysts believe many computational networks should be researched in this manner. Seres Istvan Andras shared the pre-print study with his followers on Twitter and explained the paper is a work in progress in which the researchers quantify the structural properties of the LN.

In a series of tweets, Istvan Andras explained how the research shows people’s prior intuitions toward the LN becoming centralized “were not rigorously proven,” but the team’s study shows that “the intuition is correct and it can have effects on LN.” The paper says the LN exhibits high clustering with short paths and this can be seen with entities like Lnbig.com. There was also the time that Andreas Brekken’s single node captured a large portion of the LN’s capacity. Section two of the topological study states:

LN’s local clustering coefficient distribution suggestively captures that LN is essentially comprised of a small central clique and a loosely connected periphery.

The majority of nodes have very few payment channels and a few hubs control a large portion of the network. One single entity operates a large portion of nodes and controls more than half of total LN capacity on Jan. 15, 2019.

‘Extremely Harmful Attack Vectors’

The paper continues to explain the LN’s degree distribution and one metric suggests the LN could exhibit scale-free properties. However, at the moment the study emphasizes that the majority of nodes have very few payment channels and a few hubs control a large portion of the network. The paper also says that the network has improved when it comes to random failures. The network is not so resilient against targeted attacks like a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). The study shows that the LN saw a node loss of 20 percent on March 21, 2018, and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are very probable by flooding Hashed Timelock Contracts (HTLCs).

“These attack vectors are extremely harmful, especially if they are coordinated well,” the study details. “One might expect that not only state-sponsored attackers will have the resources to attack a small network like LN.”

Altogether the removal of the 30 largest hubs incurs LN to collapse into 424 components, although most of these are isolated vertices — This symptom can be explained by the experienced disassortativity, namely hubs tend to be at the periphery.

Istvan Andras says, “Targeted attacks are not far from reality, especially in the face of high centralization. Unfortunately targeted attacks also affect average short path lengths in the graph.”

Lots of Reports Conclude Lightning Is Far From Ready

The topological study from members of Eötvös Loránd University also follows the recent report from business management technology company Scipio ERP that explains the second-layer protocol is still a long way away from fixing BTC’s scalability issues. Scipio ERP did, in fact, have issues with random failures. “We have been operating the system for four months and crashes can and will happen all the time — Transaction channels can close or may not have enough peers at any time,” the company’s study details. “There are no push notifications for these events, so you won’t know until a new transaction is placed and fails.”

“LN is surprisingly resilient against random failures, however, it is not quite robust against targeted attacks, where one removes high-degree or high-betweenness centrality nodes one-by-one,” explained Istvan Andras on Twitter.

Who needs scalability? There’s still the Lightning hat store. 

Reports over the last year have proved the LN is far from ready and still to this day not even close to being 18 months away from solving any significant scalability problems. If the same traction that occurred in 2017 happens this year with the expensive fee market and congested mempool, the Lightning Network will likely not be ready.

The researchers of the topological analysis report explained that they have some concepts in mind to help the LN become more robust. Istvan Andras told his Twitter followers that a better understanding of LN’s topology is essential and he wholeheartedly believes network resilience depends on topology. At the moment “high-level depictions of LN’s topology, convey a false sense of security and robustness,” Istvan Andras added.

What do you think about this topological study done by the researchers at Eötvös Loránd University? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Images via Shutterstock and the Topological Analysis of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network report.

Have you seen our widget service? It allows anyone to embed informative Bitcoin.com widgets on their website. They’re pretty cool, and you can customize by size and color. The widgets include price-only, price and graph, price and news, and forum threads. There’s also a widget dedicated to our mining pool, displaying our hash power.

[lewisgabriel84z31]

Verge Gets Hacked, Again

Verge Gets Hacked, Again

Just when you think Verge has seen its worst attacks and that it has resolved its vulnerabilities, it happens again. As reported on The Next Web, hackers were able to take advantage of vulnerabilities on the crypto’s blockchain and get away with XVGs, less than two months after the privacy-focused crypto had been attacked. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack lasted just a few hours with the attackers making away with approximately 35 million XVGs.

Lightning Strikes Twice

Admitting to the attack on Twitter, Verge stated that some mining pools were under a DDoS attack which was causing delays in their blocks, promising to resolve the issue quickly.

it appears some mining pools are under ddos attack, and we are experiencing a delay in our blocks, we are working to resolve this.

— vergecurrency (@vergecurrency) May 22, 2018

According to a crypto enthusiast by the name ocminer on the crypto forum Bitcointalk.org, the hackers took advantage of the same vulnerability they had exploited the last time Verge was hacked. Ocminer had also uncovered the glitch the last time. In a case of lightning striking the same place twice, the hackers were able to mine multiple blocks that were one second apart using the same algorithm.

The news elicited mixed reactions on Twitter, with many strongly condemning the developers behind Verge for not implementing more stringent security measures. Others were however sympathetic to the Verge team and wished them all the best in their efforts to fight off the attack. Still, there were those who took the opportunity to call out Verge as a disgrace to the crypto community, reiterating that they would never invest in the crypto.

So does a ddos attack generates 35.000.000 XVG in a few hours ? you get hacked via the same method twice, in less than what , 2 months ? is this the security of XVG, is this the best you can do ? Not even a joke

— Heretus Barranar (@Heretus) May 23, 2018

The hackers made away with approximately 35 million XVG which at the current market rate are worth just over $1.3 million.

The Ups And Downs Of Verge

Verge has been on the news constantly, both for good and bad news. It made headlines when it announced a partnership with Pornhub, the biggest adult entertainment website in the world which would see the site accept payments through the XVG tokens. The partnership had been hinted on by Verge for over a month as one that would be the first in the industry. While the price went up briefly, most of the hodlers who had bought the XVG tokens in anticipation of the announcement begun to sell in bulk sparking a major price fall.

Verge’s twitter account was also hacked in March by unknown attackers. The attackers posted deceptive tweets including one in which they asked XVG holders to send some of their XVG to a listed address for a chance to get their donation doubled as a way for Verge to thank their community. The attackers also claimed that they had managed to steal 1 billion XVG tokens. Verge was able to reclaim control of the twitter account, quickly reassuring its community that no XVG tokens had been stolen and that the attack was only limited to its social media accounts.

https://ift.tt/2KLuSA7

[michaelbennettcrypto]

Miners, Botnets, and Monero Create Perfect Storm for Cryptomining

Several things have come together in a perfect storm to create the most recent crypto-crime trend: the ability to surreptitiously install illicit Monero miners on unsuspecting computers around the world. Windows servers, laptops, Android devices, and IoT connected devices are all at risk.

The worst part? Targets often are unaware that they’ve been hacked — unless they’re able to recognize an occasional performance slowdown or can closely monitor their electric use. No ransoms, no stolen passwords or personal information; victims may even find it difficult to convince anyone there’s a problem.

Perfect Storm

In 2017 a hacker group released a National Security Agency-created hack called EternalBlue, which made it easy to crack into computers running Microsoft Windows.

Cryptomining itself: the fact that blockchain-based systems utilize miners, who automatically receive a cryptocurrency payment/reward for their contribution in whatever coin they choose to process.

Cryptocurrency users looking for more anonymity than offered with Bitcoin developed Monero, an altcoin better able to hide the tracks of criminal transactions.

Under the Radar

Cryptomining is both profitable and easy (enough) to mount. As a result, it is rapidly replacing ransomware as the crypto-related cybercrime of choice, especially as cybersecurity vendors are bringing ransomware protection to market. The combination of the above technologies has created what is essentially a perfect storm, threatening to wreak havoc on computer systems.

“What we’re looking at from a near and potentially long-term perspective is the value of a computer that has just a regular old CPU might be more just leaving it quietly running some cryptocurrency miner rather than infecting it with ransomware or some other software that might steal data,” explains Ryan Olson, Intelligence Director at Palo Alto Networks.

“In this new business model, attackers are no longer penalizing victims for opening an attachment or running a malicious script by taking systems hostage and demanding a ransom,” explain the Talos team. “Now attackers are actively leveraging the resources of infected systems for cryptocurrency mining.”

Botnets

A large number of compromised devices working together is known as a botnet. Botnets are a common component of a hacker’s toolbox, as they can mount distributed denial of service attacks and various other attacks that require massive amounts of coordinated transaction processing.

In the case of illicit cryptomining, however, each node works independently of the others. Cyber-criminals simply need to install many separate (but connected) miners because each miner only generates a relatively small amount of cryptocurrency.

Case in point: Smominru. Smominru leverages the EternalBlue exploit from the NSA, targeting Windows. The attacker typically mounts a phishing attack with a Microsoft Word file attachment. Once the target downloads the file, it runs a Word macro that executes a Visual Basic script that in turn runs a Microsoft PowerShell script that downloads and installs the miner executable.

Monero

One of the main cryptocurrencies that makes this whole process work is the newly-developed anonymous cryptocurrency Monero. “Bitcoin alternatives like Monero and Ethereum continue their overall upward trend in value,” explains Sandiford Oliver, Cybersecurity Researcher for Proofpoint, “Putting them squarely in the crosshairs of threat actors looking for quick profits and anonymous transactions.”

While other cryptocurrencies do have their own roles, Monero is shaping up to be the favorite. “This Monero mining botnet is extremely large, made up mostly of Microsoft Windows servers spread around the globe,” says Kevin Epstein, Vice President of Proofpoint’s Threat Operations Center.

The post Miners, Botnets, and Monero Create Perfect Storm for Cryptomining appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[brettzjacksonblog]

Miners, Botnets, and Monero Create Perfect Storm for Cryptomining

Several things have come together in a perfect storm to create the most recent crypto-crime trend: the ability to surreptitiously install illicit Monero miners on unsuspecting computers around the world. Windows servers, laptops, Android devices, and IoT connected devices are all at risk.

The worst part? Targets often are unaware that they’ve been hacked — unless they’re able to recognize an occasional performance slowdown or can closely monitor their electric use. No ransoms, no stolen passwords or personal information; victims may even find it difficult to convince anyone there’s a problem.

Perfect Storm

In 2017 a hacker group released a National Security Agency-created hack called EternalBlue, which made it easy to crack into computers running Microsoft Windows.

Cryptomining itself: the fact that blockchain-based systems utilize miners, who automatically receive a cryptocurrency payment/reward for their contribution in whatever coin they choose to process.

Cryptocurrency users looking for more anonymity than offered with Bitcoin developed Monero, an altcoin better able to hide the tracks of criminal transactions.

Under the Radar

Cryptomining is both profitable and easy (enough) to mount. As a result, it is rapidly replacing ransomware as the crypto-related cybercrime of choice, especially as cybersecurity vendors are bringing ransomware protection to market. The combination of the above technologies has created what is essentially a perfect storm, threatening to wreak havoc on computer systems.

“What we’re looking at from a near and potentially long-term perspective is the value of a computer that has just a regular old CPU might be more just leaving it quietly running some cryptocurrency miner rather than infecting it with ransomware or some other software that might steal data,” explains Ryan Olson, Intelligence Director at Palo Alto Networks.

“In this new business model, attackers are no longer penalizing victims for opening an attachment or running a malicious script by taking systems hostage and demanding a ransom,” explain the Talos team. “Now attackers are actively leveraging the resources of infected systems for cryptocurrency mining.”

Botnets

A large number of compromised devices working together is known as a botnet. Botnets are a common component of a hacker’s toolbox, as they can mount distributed denial of service attacks and various other attacks that require massive amounts of coordinated transaction processing.

In the case of illicit cryptomining, however, each node works independently of the others. Cyber-criminals simply need to install many separate (but connected) miners because each miner only generates a relatively small amount of cryptocurrency.

Case in point: Smominru. Smominru leverages the EternalBlue exploit from the NSA, targeting Windows. The attacker typically mounts a phishing attack with a Microsoft Word file attachment. Once the target downloads the file, it runs a Word macro that executes a Visual Basic script that in turn runs a Microsoft PowerShell script that downloads and installs the miner executable.

Monero

One of the main cryptocurrencies that makes this whole process work is the newly-developed anonymous cryptocurrency Monero. “Bitcoin alternatives like Monero and Ethereum continue their overall upward trend in value,” explains Sandiford Oliver, Cybersecurity Researcher for Proofpoint, “Putting them squarely in the crosshairs of threat actors looking for quick profits and anonymous transactions.”

While other cryptocurrencies do have their own roles, Monero is shaping up to be the favorite. “This Monero mining botnet is extremely large, made up mostly of Microsoft Windows servers spread around the globe,” says Kevin Epstein, Vice President of Proofpoint’s Threat Operations Center.

The post Miners, Botnets, and Monero Create Perfect Storm for Cryptomining appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[scottmapess]

Bitcoin to $40K, $400K or $1 Million & Bitcoin Funds Popping Up

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hel lo, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Crypto Viser, where we talk about everything, crypto block chain investing. In other news, the finance space, hopefully everyone is doing well. Don’t forget to subscribe Downbelow. That way you can be notified every single time I upload a new video, which is every single day. I am also in the process this week of doing a Cardno swag giveaway. So make sure that you hit. Subscribe and watch all of my videos this week. I will be giving key words to comment in the dust, the comments section down below on certain videos throughout the week. And if you comment that key word and are subscribe to this channel, you will be entered into a drawing for card. Donald Tanjim cards card Duno ADA. Metal hardware wallets which are limited addition from Crypto Supreme and the Iowa HK teams also have two year anniversary card Donald t shirts and an LP pal wallet. So don’t forget to subscribe and also watch these videos daily. Today’s all about Bitcoin. First up and by the way, Monday, Tuesday, May 11th or twelfths, depending on what time zone where you live in the world, is the Bitcoin having. And this is why we are seeing a run up to above 10000 dollar Bitcoin. As you see different websites is showing different amounts. I am recording this on Friday, May 8th for Saturday, May 9th. So the price may be a little bit different, but we’re going to see a lot of volatility up to and then after the bitcoin having. So all I’m going to say is pay attention. I have this really, really good charts from Rawle, Paul, that we’re gonna go over in just a minute. But I want to go over a few quick articles with you, and then we’re getting into what Rand Paul says about where Bitcoin is going. One of Bitcoin’s earliest miners is dedicating 66 million dollars to a in crypto to a fund of funds. Bicks in one of the earliest Bitcoin miner operators and wallets startups, is dedicating six thousand six hundred Bitcoin worth sixty six million dollars to a new fund of funds. The company announced the fund of funds with its proprietary capital on Friday and said it aims to invest in global quantitative trading funds whose strategies are based on arbitrage. Bitcoin futures contracts and trend analysis. By providing additional liquidity and market making activities to these trading desks amid Bitcoin scheduled having event, Viksten seeks to increase its holding in Bitcoin as part of its unwavering commitment to Bitcoin, the firm said in a statement. Liu Feh, who joined Bicks in from We’ll Be Exchange in late 2018 and who oversees the mining business and the fund. A fund says, quote, We are strong believers in Bitcoin and it’s now what we want to see. The Bitcoin ecosystem in China and elsewhere are in a silo. We hope the fund of funds can contribute to a better global liquidity structure for the Bitcoin ecosystem. So a lot of money is going into this is going into the fund of funds. A lot of funds are starting to pop up now. If you’ve been following my guys, I try to lead you in the same direction that I go. Okay. And if you’re a member of this channel, I started this channel in late 2018, like, really started doing an I bring videos to you every single day. Typically two to three videos a day, but at least one video every single day of the year. And we just passed 10000 subscribers. I try to give you guys a blended view of all these crypto projects, everything from a financial aspect. And I have been telling you guys about great scale Bitcoin trust for at least a year at this point. And the reason that I’ve told you about it is because, in my view, not a lot of people know about it. Not a lot of people are trading it. Not a lot of people are investing. And I’m talking about large scale institutions, are we know that. But still, the amount of money that Greyscale is collecting from these institutions that are investing in Greyscale products is so minuscule compared to the overall markets. Right. So that tells me that this is and this is like an investor and this is what this is all city guys, if you guys want to, like, really be successful. As an investor, right, whether it’s a trading or whether it’s a long term investor, you have to look for things that are not highly valued but will be. I think it was Raul. Paul, if you guys don’t know who Raul Paola’s. He is CEO of Real Vision. He was former Goldman Sachs. I think global trader. He’s a global macro investor, business cycle economists, investment strategist. He has almost two hundred thousand followers. He’s fairly accurate. And if you watch some of his stuff, it’s I mean, Real Vision is a very good Channel two to watch here on YouTube. But, you know, I don’t know how much clearer these things can be. A raw pile had a an interview with what’s his name, Anthony Pump Liano. And they were talking about investing. And it was it gut brought up somehow where he’s like, you know, when I tell people about Bitcoin, they’re like, well, I don’t understand about Bitcoin. Bitcoin isn’t money yet or Bitcoin isn’t big yet. And he’s like, well, that’s not the point of investing. You don’t invest in something when it’s big. Think about Tesla. Think about all of the excitement around Tesla, around Amazon. Right. I want you guys to think about this currently in the current environment that we’re in. People still want to buy Tesla at eight hundred dollars. People still want to buy Amazon’s stock at over two thousand dollars. You already missed the boat. You definitely missed the boat. I mean, how much higher can Amazon go? It’s gonna go to three thousand dollars. Maybe maybe it has a higher likelihood of going down in price than going up. Same thing for Tesla. And when it comes to Bitcoin and specifically greyscale, greyscale is I want you guys to think about this. Grayskull is the first s e c regulated cryptocurrency product ever. Greyscale is the only open market product for crypto currencies in the United States. Greyscale has about one percent of the total supply that will ever be in existence. It’s about one and a half percent. And right now they have about two percent of the circulating supply of Bitcoin. I mean, I don’t know how much more you need from an investor standpoint to see that these type of products you need to get in before your neighbor starts talking about it, before your coworker starts talking about it. Right. And this is why I’m telling you now you’re seeing all of these funds popping up. Why do you think that is? Because there’s more demand for the funds from institutional investors, from hedge funds, et cetera. This is other news that just came out, Bitcoin fund. This was on May 8th. Bitcoin fund completes forty eight million dollar exchange traded offering. Just don’t tell Americans. The Toronto based investment manager, three IQ Corp. has completed a forty eight million dollar offering and its Bitcoin fund trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Just don’t tell Americans. A statement released that day detailing the investment opportunity makes it very clear in bold letters that the top not for distribution to United States newswire services or for dissemination in the United States. In spite of being traded on the Canadian exchange, the value of the investment is denominated in U.S. dollars. I mean. Guys read the writing, right? While not technically the widely anticipated big Bitcoin exchange traded fund or ETF that many institutional investors have been waiting for. This is a closed end fund better described as an exchange traded product. The price of Bitcoin increased five percent. Yada, yada, yada. We know that the investment code led by Canaccord Genuity Corp and Wealth Partners, all included all these is not allowed to be marketed in the U.S. to investors, as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been reluctant to approve similar products for U.S. investors, namely Bitcoin ETF. Last year there were a few that were supposed to be coming to either approval or denial, and they all got tonight a disclosure at the bottom of the statement reads, This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act. Sorry, Americans. So, again, Vitt, these ETF, these large companies, I understand what an exchange traded fund is. I get it. For some reason, the FCC does not want an ETF for Bitcoin, at least not right now. I don’t know if it’s because of price manipulation concerns. I don’t know if it’s because of the global aspect of the Bitcoin. I don’t know. But they will not approve an ETF. And when I look at ETF versus like a greyscale fund, I mean, guys, in my view, maybe an ETF is not what we need in the crypto space. Maybe it is these trust funds that are going to hold the actual hard asset underneath it and custody it and own a lot. I mean, guys. It’s very telling that all of these funds are popping up and that they’re not focused on the United States at all. And they’re making it very, very clear. So. And the other thing that I’d say is the system in the United States, the investing system, the open markets. Right. It’s set up against the everyday American right. Most Americans will have no idea how to transact, how to trade, what is a good investment, what is not a good investment. They will not know a great I’ve talked to so many people that I know about Greyscale. And it just goes right over their head like they understand the concept, but they don’t understand. I can double my money on this. You know, I could potentially get huge gains way over, you know, transacting in stocks or futures or options or whatever. So anyway, Raul Pough posted this on Twitter just the other day. He said Bitcoin. Bitcoin porn and the perfect setup. Chart one is the perfect wedge. If you use classic charting techniques, it gives you a price target of around forty thousand dollars. So this is the Bitcoin chart. It shows you from twenty seventeen highs. And you can see this wedge right here. And we are we’re getting very close to the tip of this wedge. And then really it, it’s either gonna go rock it up or rock it down. But you can see it appears that we I mean, in my view, during the next pump, huge pump or bull run, whatever you call it, we will probably pass this last all time high. So Routt is putting a 10 a 40 K price target on this. He said chart to the perfect little wedge on a log chart. Well, that gives you a price objective for this run. Potentially. Keyword is potentially of one million dollars. Okay, so I’m going to show you the next chart, which explains how you get to the one million dollars. This is another wedge to show you how tight it is. And then chart three is the perfect regression channel. This gives a one standard deviation move to four hundred thousand dollars and a two standard potential to one million dollars potential potential. So these are the standard deviation lines. The gray ones. So if it hits one standard deviation, it’s at 400000. And if it hits two, we are going to be at a million dollars. Again, when you’re looking at a zoomed out version of the charts, you can see how clear this is. And again, these are potential. This is not guaranteed to happen. But these charts are making it look even more and more close to where we’ve been waiting, which is a Bullrun and higher prices. Raul Powell says whatever plays out after a key technical break like today, this was a few days ago, the probability of vastly higher prices has risen dramatically. And this is confirmed by the stock to flow models by 100 trillion USD on Twitter. And the breakout has happened almost exactly at the happening. Add to that the entire world’s central banks are either see their currencies collapse to the almighty dollar or they are printing money like crazy. Huge quantitative easing. Fiat meets the hardest money that automatically quantitatively tightens bitcoin winds. So what the Bitcoin having is it’s a reduction on the new coins that are produced. Right. It’s in reduction on the inflation rate where that is going to be happening in parallel to the United States printing trillions and trillions of dollars. We are almost at 10 trillion dollars in less than a year of new money being printed. And that is going to continue. It’s going to get larger and larger. But these things are happening in parallel. I keep seeing this two guys in parallel crypto potential bull market, quantitative easing with printing money rates going lower. Economies shut down. All of these things are going to at some point be realized. And when I say be realized, I mean, the price is going to move up. The market is going to stop this Fakhoury that we’re seeing. Hard assets are being suppressed, crypto currencies, gold, silver, other metals are being suppressed, significantly suppressed, while the stock market continues to go up. And mind you, I want you guys to keep in mind the stock market index indexes, right. Or indices. Dow Jones, NASDAQ, S&P, these are all blended indices. Right. So if they’re not performing well, they remove the underperformers and put better performing stocks into the index. The other thing to think about is these large cap stocks, Tesla, Amazon, Google, Facebook, they have very high market capitalization so they can push the price of those stocks up by a small percentage. That equates to billions or tens of billions of dollars. And that in itself can rise the index while the majority of the stocks are still in the red. I have seen and I’ve told you guys the stocks that I got trapped in in my portfolio, which are very few. I pretty much dumped all stocks last year, but and traditional investment products. But the ones that I got trapped in negative. Ninety five percent. Negative 90 percent. And we don’t hear mainstream media talking about this. We heard it when Bitcoin went down. Ninety five percent, but not when some of these other stocks have gone down. Ninety five percent. And we’re going to see more of this. We are definitely going to be seeing seeing more of those. I mean, think about just retail. J.C. Penney stock right now is like I think 18 cents just a few years ago was at seventy dollars. Right. Don’t hear about that on CNBC. What do you think Macy’s going? Where do you think Kohl’s is going? All those stocks are dropping. Bed, Bath and Beyond limited brands. All of these brands are going down. Probably a lot of restaurant chains are probably not going to do that well, either. So anyway, this is all happening in parallel to the Bitcoin having quantitative hardening. So we are really going to see what is the winner is a quantitative easing or quantitative hardening. Rand Paul continues saying this is one of the best setups in any asset class I’ve ever witnessed, technical, fundamental flow of funds and plumbing all. Now, again, to be clear, even if it has 90 percent odds, doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to work. I can and will be wrong often and dramatically. Good luck. Expect horrific volatility both up and down. But you can’t make five x 10x or one hundred X returns without large drawdowns. So be careful how much you put in. This is really the best advice. It always feels like you have too little until it doesn’t. And then you wish you didn’t have so much. So, you know, I don’t provide financial advice, but what I can tell you guys is if you want to trade and you want to hold, do them separately, take a certain amount of money and say, I’m going to take this money and I’m just going to trade this amount. If I lose it, that’s it. If I gain on it, I’m going to take the profits and put it in a separate account. So you’re pulling your profits separate from your investment and you haven’t trading money separate from holding money because you have to play this market differently than you’ve played it the last three, four years. You have to. We’re in a different environment. We’re in a different time frame. We have a lot going on simultaneously. So this is about diversifying portfolios and understanding. If you’re holding just Bitcoin, that may do well, but it may not because you may go up in there. We’re going to come right back down. There is going to be extreme volatility. And this is where it could be a good opportunity for some people to start getting their feet wet with trading. But again, you have to do your own research. You have to understand the risks involved. You have to understand that you can lose all your money and never take investment advice from anybody on YouTube. Do your own research. This should be a piece of your research and something to get you to think. But you have to do your own research. I’m not a financial expert. I’m not a financial adviser. And nothing I say should be perceived as financial advice because it is not. These are my thoughts and my opinions. And I happen to agree with Rand Paul. I think that this is all happening in tandem. You know, it’s hard because I want to keep buying. Right. But we’re also in a situation where you have to have capital available in case something else goes wrong. I mean, the economy shut down. Unemployment is out of control, et cetera, et cetera. Pay attention. Invest responsibly. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Don’t forget to subscribe. I have giveaways going on all week. So check out all my videos. See guys in the next video and crypto on.

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