North Korea Hacks Bitcoin Exchanges Attempting To Steal Amid Bubble Warnings

The value of soaring crypto-currencies is creating a bubble financial analysts continue to warn about, but it’s also making it overly appealing to cyber thieves.  North Korean hackers are now attempting to steal bitcoin, as experts warn of an impending financial dilemma.

Ashley Shen, an independent security researcher, said: “We assume one of the reasons why Bitcoin is being attacked is because the price keeps increasing and we think it’s reasonable for hackers (to target). Digital currency might be easier to gain than physical currency. So I think it’s reasonable.”  Amid speculation only, bitcoin is up 1500% in 2017, making theft attempts by the rogue regime unavoidable.

Shen and her colleagues have tracked the attacks by hacking groups Lazarus, Bluenoroff, and Andariel  (suspected to be North Korean operations) on financial institutions including banks in Europe and South Korea, an ATM company and Bitcoin exchange.

“Before, when we tracked nation-state attackers, they usually perform cyber attacks which are aimed at confidential data and intelligence,” Shen said.  “However recently we’ve discovered that some of the APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) groups are trying to hack financial institutions like banks and Bitcoin exchanges to gain financial profit.”  So far, North Korea’s attempts to hack into bitcoin exchanges have failed.

“My own opinion is they will probably keep doing the Bitcoins because the price keeps increasing and it’s a good investment… So I assume they will do more Bitcoin attacks and of course they will keep targeting banks because that’s what they did before,” Shen said.

One of her co-researchers, who wishes to remain anonymous because they work for a South Korean bank, told Sky News: “Just a few years ago the attacks were initiated to paralyze the society, but for some time now they’ve been hacking for money – so I kind of wonder if they are facing financial difficulties.”

As Bitcoin has surged in value, particularly over the last week, it has become increasingly attractive to hackers. On Thursday, Bitcoin mining marketplace NiceHash, based in Slovenia, suspended operations after hackers stole 4,700 Bitcoin – at the time worth roughly $64m.

“The vast majority of cryptocurrency use is not criminal. Bitcoin is one of more than 1,000 cryptocurrencies and many people use cryptocurrencies to bank or to transfer money or make investments,” said The National Crime Agency. “We do see cybercriminals using cryptocurrencies as one of a range of ways in which criminals try to launder money. But criminals are mistaken if they believe that cryptocurrencies are untraceable and provide total anonymity.”

$300 Million In Crypto Currency Lost FOREVER Thanks To A Bug In A Digital Wallet

$300 million worth of the cryptocurrency Ethereum has been almost definitely lost forever.  The losing of the currency was accidental and due to a bug in a digital wallet.

The Ethereum cryptocurrency has been lost after a series of bugs in a popular digital wallet service led one curious developer accidentally taking control of and then locking up the funds, according to reports.

The user, “devops199”, triggered the flaw completely accidentally. When they realized that they had taken control of the ether of other, they attempted to undo the damage by deleting the code which had transferred ownership of the funds. Rather than returning the money, however, the program simply locked all the funds in those multisignature wallets permanently, with no way to access them. “This means that currently no funds can be moved out of the multi-sig wallets,” Parity says in a security advisory.

Unlike most cryptocurrency hacks, however, the money wasn’t deliberately taken: it was effectively destroyed by accident. According to the Daily Mail, the lost money was in the form of Ether, the tradable currency that fuels the Ethereum distributed app platform, and was kept in digital multi-signature wallets built by a developer called Parity. These wallets require more than one user to enter their key before funds can be transferred.

On Tuesday, Parity revealed that, while fixing a bug that let hackers steal $32m out of few multi-signature wallets, it had inadvertently left the second flaw in its systems that allowed one user to become the sole owner of every single multi-signature wallet.

“We are analyzing the situation and will release an update with further details shortly,” Parity told users. Parity says that it is unable to confirm the exact amount lost and that the $300 million figure is “purely speculative”. The company also disputes that the currency is “lost.” They are arguing that the term “frozen” is more accurate. But if it is frozen, it appears that no-one has the ability to unfreeze the funds and there seems to be no resolution in sight.

“The Parity vulnerability was the result of an incorrectly coded smart contract used by the Parity wallet to store tokens on the Ethereum network,” said Dominic Williams, founder of blockchain firm DFINITY. “The vulnerability made it possible for anyone to ‘freeze’ the tokens held by that smart contract, making them immovable. At this time, the only method we are aware of to ‘unfreeze’ tokens held by the vulnerable smart contract would be to create a new ‘hard fork’ Ethereum client that deploys a fix. This would require every full node on the Ethereum network to upgrade by the date of the hard fork to stay in sync, including all miners, wallets, exchanges, etc.”

As Bitcoin Surges over $1,800, Federal Reserve Official Admits Blockchain Value

(ANTIMEDIA) The price of bitcoin just surpassed $1,800, its second all-time high this week. As governments worldwide eye the blockchain technology and ready new cryptocurrency rules, there is no sign bitcoin’s astronomical rise in value, up 81 percent this year, is over.

According to Coindesk’s Bitcoin Price Index, the average price of bitcoin hit $1,839.23 on Thursday after starting the day’s trade session at $1,732.13. That jump of more than $100 follows the historical achievement Tuesday of bitcoin breaking $1,700 for the first time.

What’s driving this mega surge? Recent comments and developments from officials in the US, Japan, and Russia, according to CNBC.

Though the price of the digital currency had already been steadily mounting, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari spoke favorably of the blockchain technology Tuesday before the record price increase of bitcoin.

“I think sentiment has shifted in the markets, in the Fed,” Kashkari told attendees of a technology conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, according to Reuters. “I would say I think conventional wisdom now is that blockchain and the underlying technology is probably more interesting and has more potential than maybe bitcoin does by itself.”

The blockchain is a digital, public ledger on which bitcoin transactions are recorded. Some proponents of the technology say its implications go beyond disrupting government currencies, threatening the status quo in global finance altogether as well as insurance markets and even governments themselves.

Last week, Russia announced that bitcoin would be legal by 2019, Cointelegraph reported. And in March, Japan legalized bitcoin for payments, which led to more purchases of the cryptocurrency with yen.

Back in the US, the infamous Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, are waiting to hear back from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as it reviews its original decision to reject a proposal for an exchange-traded fund, or ETF, that facilitates the entry of large institutional investors into the bitcoin market, CNBC reported.

This week isn’t over yet, and already since Monday the market capitalization of bitcoin has surged more than $3 billion to $29.53 billion, CNBC reported.

Meanwhile, in the bitcoin community, there is controversy pending over how changes could be made to the blockchain technology, which has been slowing amid a backlog issue. Some people are calling for a “hard fork,” in which two separate bitcoin currencies would operate, though no concrete solution has been proposed yet.

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