Archive for the ‘Economics’ Category
The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it
All over the western world banks are shutting down cash machines and branches. They are trying to push you into using their digital payments and digital banking infrastructure. Just like Google wants everyone to access and navigate the broader internet via its privately controlled search portal, so financial institutions want everyone to access and navigate […]
A curious tale of the priest, the broker, the hacked newswires, and $100m of insider trades
Two former investment bankers, one of whom is also a priest, have been found guilty of an elaborate scam – hacking newswires to read press releases prior to publication, and trade millions using this insider information. Vitaly Korchevsky, formerly a veep at Morgan Stanley and a pastor at the Slavic Evangelical Baptist Church in Philadelphia, […]
Hackers steal $30m from top Seoul bithumb exchange
Hackers stole more than $30 million worth of cryptocurrencies from South Korea’s top bitcoin exchange, sending the unit’s price falling around the world on Wednesday. The virtual currency was priced at $6,442 dollars late afternoon in Seoul, down about 4.4 percent from 24 hours earlier, after the latest attack on Bithumb raised concerns over cryptocurrency […]
Bitcoin Price: ‘Bloody Sunday’ Not Caused by Coinrail Hack
As CCN reported, the little-known Coinrail became the latest cryptocurrency exchange to fall prey to hackers, who are said to have made off with approximately $40 million worth of tokens, a fairly pedestrian figure relative to some of the hacks seen over the years. Later that day, the bitcoin price began to careen downwards, taking […]
Hackers Stole Over $20 Million From Misconfigured Ethereum Clients
A group of hackers has stolen over $20 million worth of Ethereum from Ethereum-based apps and mining rigs, Chinese cyber-security firm Qihoo 360 Netlab reported today. The cause of these thefts is Ethereum software applications that have been configured to expose an RPC [Remote Procedure Call] interface on port 8545. The purpose of this interface […]
Blockchain’s Once-Feared 51% Attack Is Now Becoming Regular among smaller coins
Monacoin, bitcoin gold, zencash, verge and now, litecoin cash. At least five cryptocurrencies have recently been hit with an attack that used to be more theoretical than actual, all in the last month. In each case, attackers have been able to amass enough computing power to compromise these smaller networks, rearrange their transactions and abscond […]
McAfee’s Cryptocurrency Leaks Personal Information for Thousands of Investors
On Mar 30, researchers at Kromtech Security identified a database open to the public containing full names, addresses, email addresses, encrypted passwords, wallet information, along with links to scanned passports, driver’s licenses, and other IDs for over 25,000 investors of the newly created Bezop. The information was found within a MongoDB database without any security. […]
Tried checking under the sofa? Indian BTC exchange Coinsecure finds itself $3.5m lighter
Indian Bitcoin exchange Coinsecure has mislaid 438.318 BTC belonging to its customers. In a statement by parent firm Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt, posted late on Thursday, the biz said its chief security officer had extracted a bunch of Bitcoin to distribute to punters – and discovered the funds were “lost in the process.” The vanished […]
Do you have a browser based bitcoin wallet? Check you’re not hacked if it’s JavaScript based
A significant number of past and current cryptocurrency products contain a JavaScript class named SecureRandom(), containing both entropy collection and a PRNG. The entropy collection and the RNG itself are both deficient to the degree that key material can be recovered by a third party with medium complexity. There are a substantial number of variations […]
‘Being cash-free puts us at risk of attack’: Swedes turn against cashlessness
Most consumers already say they manage without cash altogether, while shops and cafes increasingly refuse to accept notes and coins because of the costs and risk involved. Until recently, however, it has been hard for critics to find a hearing. “The Swedish government is a rather nice one, we have been lucky enough to have […]
Hacker Uses Exploit to Generate Verge Cryptocurrency out of Thin Abir
An unknown attacker has exploited a bug in the Verge cryptocurrency network code to mine Verge coins at a very rapid pace and generate funds almost out of thin air. The Verge development team is preparing a hard-fork of the entire cryptocurrency code to fix the issue and revert the blockchain to a previous state […]
The Lottery Hackers
That’s when it hit him. Right there, in the numbers on the page, he noticed a flaw—a strange and surprising pattern, like the cereal-box code, written into the fundamental machinery of the game. A loophole that would eventually make Jerry and Marge millionaires, spark an investigation by a Boston Globe Spotlight reporter, unleash a statewide […]
Tesla’s Amazon Cloud Account Hacked to Mine Cryptocurrency
An unidentified hacker or hackers broke into a Tesla-owned Amazon cloud account and used it to “mine” cryptocurrency, security researchers said. The breach also exposed proprietary data for the electric carmaker. The researchers, who worked for RedLock, a 3-year-old cybersecurity startup, said they discovered the intrusion last month while trying to determine which organization left […]
Crooks opt for Monero, paypal, ebay and gamesfor laundering
“Platforms like Monero are designed to be truly anonymous, and tumbler services like CoinJoin can [further] obscure transaction origins,” said Dr Mike McGuire, senior lecturer in criminology at Surrey University and author of the study. Many cybercriminals are using virtual currency to convert the illegal proceeds of crime into hard cash and assets. Digital payment […]
Can AMD Vulnerabilities Be Used to Game the Stock Market?
On Tuesday, a little known security company claimed to have found vulnerabilities and backdoors in some AMD processors. Within some parts of the security community, the story behind the researchers’ discovery quickly became more interesting than the discovery itself. The researchers, who work for CTS Labs, only reported the flaws to AMD shortly before publishing […]
Phishing and Attempted Stealing Incident on Binance VIA / BTC coins not only stopped, but costs hackers money
On Mar 7, UTC 14:58-14:59, within this 2 minute period, the VIA/BTC market experienced abnormal trading activity. Our automatic risk management system was triggered, and all withdrawals were halted immediately. This was part of a large scale phishing and stealing attempt. So far: All funds are safe and no funds have been stolen. The hackers […]
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.
The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment. […] The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 […]
Glitch on Bitcoin Exchange Drops Prices to Zero Dollars, User Tries to Make Off With Trillions
Zaif, A cryptocurrency exchange in Japan reportedly experienced a temporary glitch last week that suddenly offered investors their pick of coins for the low, low price of zero dollars. Several customers took advantage of the opportunity, but one really ran with it. According to Reuters, it was possible to buy cryptocurrencies for free on the […]
Tesla accused of knowingly selling defective vehicles in new lawsuit
A former Tesla employee claims the company knowingly sold defective cars, often referred to as “lemons,” and that he was demoted and eventually fired after reporting the practice to his superiors. He made these allegations in a lawsuit filed in late January in New Jersey Superior Court under the Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA).The former […]
Coinbase empies bank accounts without consent
Digital currency exchange Coinbase said it inadvertently charged punters for transactions they never made, effectively draining money from their bank accounts. It has promised to refund the money taken. For the last few days, netizens have been complaining that funds had vanished from bank accounts linked to Coinbase without reason. Some people report multiple charges […]
Koinz Trading Bitcoin mining pyramid game enters receivership
At least 60 people fall for Koinz Trading, that claimed to buy and run a BTC miner for you for the price of EUR 6100 + EUR 23 per month. Payments stopped in September. Rumor has it that the founder Barry van Mourik was selling the computers to pay for his debts. Zeker zestig gedupeerden […]
LoopX Startup Pulls ICO Exit Scam and Disappears with $4.5 Million
A cryptocurrency startup named LoopX has pulled an exit scam after collecting around $4.5 million from users during an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) held for the past weeks. The LoopX team disappeared out of the blue at the start of the week when it took down its website and deleted its Facebook, Telegram, and YouTube […]
At least 4200 popular and large websites hijacked by hidden crypto-mining code after popular plugin pwned
Thousands of websites around the world – from the UK’s NHS and ICO to the US government’s court system – were today secretly mining crypto-coins on netizens’ web browsers for miscreants unknown. The affected sites all use a fairly popular plugin called Browsealoud, made by Brit biz Texthelp, which reads out webpages for blind or […]
The gender pay gap at Uber is small and has a reason
Specifically, the study stated, drivers who make runs for Uber more frequently are more likely to know where and when to operate in order to get the highest-paying fares. Thus, because women, on average, spend less time driving for Uber than their male counterparts, they are less likely to be around to grab the highest-paying […]
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange loses more than $500 million to hackers
Coincheck said that around 523 million of the exchange’s NEM coins were sent to another account around 3 a.m. local time (1 p.m. ET Thursday), according to a Google translation of a Japanese transcript of the Friday press conference from Logmi. The exchange has about 6 percent of yen-bitcoin trading, ranking fourth by market share […]
