[BREAKING] Russian hackers indicted by US special counsel Robert Mueller used Bitcoin for payments

Russian intelligence officers indicted by US special counsel Robert Mueller “principally used bitcoin when purchasing servers, registering domains, and otherwise making payments in furtherance of hacking activity.

Days before President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announces new indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The indictments have been levied against 12 Russian intelligence officers (GRU) for hacking the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during the 2016 election and leaking through DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. This comes after 13 Russian entities were indicted earlier this year for their propaganda campaign. Read the actual document here.

UPDATE: DCLeaks was paid for with Bitcoin. The 11 Russian intelligence agents indicted today bought Bitcoin — and mined it themselves — to pay for the infrastructure they needed to hack into the DNC and release the documents.

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July 13, 2018

Russian Kaspersky Lab Prevents 100K Crypto Theft Attempts in 2018

Kaspersky Lab said in a report that they had prevented over 100,000 crypto theft attempts since the beginning of 2018. The experts from the firm tracked 1,000 Ethereum wallets where users were scammed to transfer over ETH 21,000, which is the equivalent to about $10 million based on current rates. The report also highlights phishing as another act quite popular to get probable investors email address and then send them an official mail to transfer funds to criminals accounts. The study also states that the success of cybercriminals is dependant on the skillful exploitation of the “human factor.”

Popular crypto service MyEtherWallet hit by attack after Hola VPN gets hacked

Second time this year, MyEtherWallet that offers services to manage cryptocurrencies suffered a severe security issue. While the good news is that MyEtherWallet regular users were not impacted because the problem was not with the wallet services, but with the VPN services Hola to connect to MyEtherwallet. While the VPN services were compromised for five hours, it suggests people use a paid service rather than using a free VPN. How many users were hit and what is the impact is still unclear?

Crypto Stolen – Three times more in six months of 2018 than in all of 2017, Cipher Trace Report

Cryptos Stolen — CryptoStolen – Three times more in six months of 2018 than in all of 2017

A new report by CipherTrace revealed – The first six months of 2018 have seen nearly three times as much crypto getting stolen than in all of 2017. FBI also reported a six-fold increase in the number of crypto-related complaints from 2015 to 2017. The reports highlight in detail the web services like tumblers, mixers, and chain hopping that cost criminal, a small amount and turn stolen cryptos legitimate and untraceable. The report stresses a need to call for more stringent measures against crypto theft, primarily through the use of advanced technology and public awareness.

[Breaking] $12.5 Million ETH stolen as Bancor gets hacked. We tracked down the wallet that caused the breach.

At 00:00 UTC, Bancor experienced a security breach. A wallet used to upgrade some smart contracts was compromised. This compromised wallet was then used to withdraw ETH from the BNT smart contract in the amount of 24,984 ETH (~$12.5M). The same wallet also stole 229,356,645 NPXS (~$1M) and 3,200,000 BNT (~$1oM).

Once the theft was identified, Bancor was able to freeze the stolen BNT, limiting the damage to the Bancor ecosystem from the theft. It is not possible to freeze the ETH or any other stolen tokens. Primary analysis shows this wallet address and the transaction hash that led to the breach. 22,000 ETH were transferred for a transaction cost of just $0.88 at 61 GWEI. Read the official statement here.

Nuo is a decentralised and transparent crypto banking platform. It acts as a blockchain powered financial control centre to store, spend, borrow and grow your cryptocurrencies.

July 9, 2018