Where there is wealth, there are robbers looking for it — an iron law that is no different in the blockchain world, where hackers have found entirely new ways to get rich.

According to the data provided by the tencent security, according to the associated with the encrypted digital currency hacker attacks, from 2013 to 2018 (the first half of the year) has increased about five times the number of directly, the year is expected to add about 10 times, only the first half of this year, hacker’s attack on encrypted digital currency has directly caused the loss of $2 billion.

Responsible for the exchange of events more and more, on the one hand is the lack of legal regulation of hackers unruliness, on the other hand, technology protection system as stock exchanges and Banks and monitoring, and combined with encryption digital currency of anonymity of low risk and high return, digital encryption monetary industry has become a perfect sheep of hacking sword.

1

Blockchain is not necessarily 100% secure

Created in January 2009, the original bitcoin spent its most vulnerable time in the hands of a community of liberal believers. In early May 2010, when Bitcoin was worth just a few cents, these community members began to proclaim that bitcoin was the safest currency in the world.

After hearing this, it is not known which hacker played the most dangerous joke with bitcoin ever.

On August 15, 2010, a hacker created 184.4 billion bitcoins overnight through a native bitcoin bug on bitcoin’s 74,638 height block. Of course, the hacker did not carry out a subsequent attack after this feat, which caused bitcoin to crash after inflation; If there were, we wouldn’t see bitcoin today.

While the hacker left satisfied with the joke, the bug horrified the bitcoin code maintenance team at the time. “It was the most serious problem ever,” recalls Wladimir Van Der Laan, the chief developer of the Bitcoin community.

There are many reasons why the hackers gave up, but not the least: Bitcoin had little value in October 2010, its dark web circulation market was not yet established, and few people were willing to buy and hold it. If the hacker had taken any further action, it would not have been of any benefit to the hacker, other than to zero out the bitcoins, which already had little value.

After this battle with hackers, bitcoin security was quickly patched up by technicians, and the bitcoin community for a long time did not mention the growing claim that “Bitcoin is the most secure cryptocurrency in the world.” The subsequent years of failed attacks on bitcoin’s main network have led some media outlets to revive claims that bitcoin is the most secure cryptocurrency in the world.

However, the battle in October 2010 is not destined to be the end of the war between hackers and bitcoin, but just the beginning of the war without smoke.

2

Low-end hackers can also be highly profitable

Bitcoin is safe, but with the emergence of the crypto market, exchanges, mining pools and all kinds of fake coins and forked coins are so vulnerable that hackers have found a better way to plunder the wealth of cryptocurrency.

John Sedunov, assistant professor of finance at Villanova University, has said, “Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have grown dramatically in popularity and value over the past few years. This rapid rise may have caught some exchanges off guard, who may not have the money, time or even the technical ability to quickly ramp up security against potential attackers.”

Any hacker can easily find these simple vulnerabilities. After all, it’s better to use Bitcoin to make money than to attack the bitcoin blockchain, and these fledgling exchanges have far more security vulnerabilities than “Bitcoin” because they don’t have much investment in security protection.

A Hacker who goes by the pen name Hacker once wrote about his bitcoin theft experience on Steem:

In June 2013, a bitcoin phishing site I created by accident sent me the login account information of dozens of exchanges. When I logged in these accounts out of curiosity, I quickly found that the bitcoin exchange was full of bugs and I could withdraw all their bitcoin without any hindrance.

After I withdrew the coins, I sold them on localBitcoins.com. That day I made $8,000 in cash, which felt like heaven, considering that was four months ‘salary. After that, I fell in love with being a hacker. It was much more fun than typing code in the office.

Hackers, such as hackers, who target only individuals, are small players in the cryptocurrency world. Most of them only use phishing websites, fake wallets and keyloggers to steal the private keys of individual users to carry out the theft.

The real threat to the cryptocurrency market is not this small group of hackers, but a smaller but more intelligent group of hackers who are not interested in phishing small money crimes but prefer to find vulnerabilities in exchanges, mining pools, and other small token smart contracts. To launch predatory attacks on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

On the dark Web, a hacker’s status is measured by the value of the damage or gain caused by his attack. The news of bitcoin and exchanges being attacked is just like a list of hackers’ worth, and wealth and reputation are constantly attracting new hackers to try.

3

Exchanges are riddled with loopholes

According to Tencent Security statistics, there were 54 security incidents in the cryptocurrency market from 2013 to the first half of 2018, of which 10 major security incidents were caused by hackers.

On January 4, 2015, the Bitstamp exchange was hacked. The hacker looted 19,000 bitcoins (worth $5.1 million) in the hours between the night of January 4 and the early hours of January 5, and the price of bitcoin plunged 40 percent in the following days.

On August 2, 2016, hackers used a trading flaw on Bitfinex to steal nearly 120,000 Bitcoins, worth nearly $67 million, from users in a short period of time. The incident caused the bitcoin price to drop 20% that day.

In April 2017, nearly 4,000 bitcoins were stolen from The South Korean exchange Youbit. In December of the same year, the exchange suffered heavy losses and filed for bankruptcy.

In March 2018, binance Exchange was hacked. But because of the multiple verification, hackers can only cash out of the market by shorting. Bitcoin plunged 10% on the news.

In addition to exchanges being attacked, low-power tokens are just as easy to hack.

In May 2018, Bitcoin Gold (BTG) suffered a 51% double-spend attack, losing $18.6 million. Ironically, NiceHash, the world’s largest computing power rental platform for hackers, was robbed of $70 million in Bitcoin last year.

Blockbeats found that each attack caused bitcoin to drop more or less. Caoz, a well-known Internet personality, said:

“There are leaders, decision makers, interests, values, forbidden areas, and legal and moral constraints behind hackers.”

The emergence of bitcoin futures markets has led some bitcoin evil funds to manipulate the value of bitcoin by hiring hackers. As unacceptable as this may seem, it is reality when it comes to profits.

4

Who is becoming a hacker?

Hacking seems to be a fairly neutral term. In 2010, before bitcoin took off, the Cumbria police force in northern England and Tufin Technology, an information technology security company, surveyed 1,000 children in London about their intentions to become hackers.

Figures show that nearly a quarter of children have been hacking, with a fifth of them doing it for the money.

Blockbeats doesn’t know how many of those 1,000 kids became hackers, part of the subsequent underground bitcoin hacks, but with absolute financial inducments, it’s likely anyone has the potential to become an underground hacker.

The underground hacker, as a criminal hidden behind ordinary people, even though it did not directly kill anyone behind the bitcoin war, it made many ordinary people pay a staggering price.

On June 13, 2011, a user who lost 25,000 bitcoins in a hack posted a plea for help: “I am suicidal now. I am trying to recover my wallet backup, but it is not working. Could you please tell me what to do next, short of jumping off a building and killing myself?” .

Luckily for the user of the post, he regained some of his Bitcoin by initiating a donation in a 32-page response now seven years old.

Yet how many assets have been lost and how many have been recovered without the media noticing? In a bull market, everyone let their guard down, which allowed hackers to take advantage. Now in a bear market, hackers have more incentive to attack.

Because of the constant emergence of security problems, more and more projects began to hire blockchain security teams to review the code and carry out security reviews on the project, which also led to the emergence of many blockchain security entrepreneurial teams. For ordinary users, they should choose more secure exchanges and more trusted wallets to store and use their digital assets. For the entrepreneurial team, both the exchange and the project side, it is necessary to enhance security awareness and protect the security of users’ digital assets.

Source: Block rhythm BlockBeats, Bianews, Know Chuangyu

Author: 0 x14

Geek race, 48 hours Blockathon | block chain marathon waiting for you to challenge (chengdu)

Time: September 14-16, 2018

Venue: China-Korea Internet + New Technology Incubator, 12th Floor, Building A, No.2 Jingrong International Plaza, No.200 Tianfu 5th Street, High-tech Zone, Chengdu

• Recruit 50 developers (to register by identifying the QR code below or clicking “Read the original article”)

• The registration fee of 100 yuan is the deposit for the competition. There is no refund for participants who cannot attend the event due to personal reasons. Participants will participate in the whole activity and be refunded at the end of the activity. The first check-in will start at 18:00 on 14th September. Please check in every morning on 15th and 16th September.

• The organizer provided free food and drinks for 2 days, and prepared a T-shirt for each participant