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Warning: How one-time password bots can steal all your crypto
Scammers have been using advanced hacking bots on Telegram designed to trick investors into divulging their two-factor authentication, leading to accounts being locked and wiped out.
Cybercriminals are using bots purchased on Telegram to trick users into giving them access to their cryptocurrency accounts.
According to a report from cybersecurity firm Intel471, one-time password (OTP) bots are “remarkably easy to use” and are relatively inexpensive to operate relative to the amount that can be earned from a successful attack.
A Telegram bot known as BloodOTPbot charges a monthly fee of just $300 to hackers to access. Fraudsters also have the option to spend an extra $20–$100 on more phishing tools that target individual social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, financial services such as PayPal and Venmo, and crypto platforms such as Coinbase.
OTP bots are especially nefarious, as they are generally the final step in the hacking process after all necessary personal information has been gathered on the victim, known in hacker parlance as “the fullz.” Hackers use the OTP bot to stage a seemingly official phone call, while simultaneously prompting the two-factor authorization (2FA) code from the user’s crypto platform. Once the typically flustered user divulges the code, hackers gain immediate and total access to the victim’s account. Read More
What Is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS)?
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is similar to DNS. But it offers a secure and decentralized way to manage website domains—and send ETH and ERC20 tokens.
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) works in a similar way to the internet's DNS system, helping users find websites via names rather than numbers.
ENS is not designed to replace DNS, but to work alongside it.
In the early days of the web, to access a website you needed to type in the IP address, a string of numbers that were difficult to remember and almost impossible to guess. Then came human-readable names to make it easier for actual people to surf the world wide web. That shift turned 104.26.3.128 into Decrypt.co!
Cryptocurrency is still very much in the IP address phase: Users need long, difficult-to-remember addresses in order to access the pages they want. That's where the Ethereum Name Service comes in. It wants to make using crypto as easy as surfing the web. Read More
Avalanche growth sparks third-party cross-chain bridges
Avalanche blockchain launched its own official Ethereum bridge in 2021, but now a third-party cross-chain bridge claims to reduce transaction costs even further.
Avalanche, a layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain network, gets a new cross-chain bridge from Umbria Network to help traders transfer liquidity between the Ethereum mainnet and the Avalanche blockchain.
Avalanche supports multiple virtual machines, including WebAssembly and Ethereum Virtual Machine, allowing different sub-chains to incorporate a specific way of operations.
Multiple virtual machine support enables easy connection with Avalanche. The network launched its official Ethereum bridge in 2021 to allow the two-way transfer of ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens across the two blockchains. But the network’s growth and its native token, AVAX, have been seeing serious gains over the last few months, leading to the creation of third-party cross-chain bridges.
Narni, a new cross-chain bridge by the Umbria Network, promises to offer a 90% cheaper transaction fee compared to the official Avalanche bridge. The platform claims its bespoke system, which uses single-asset liquidity pools and a custom oracle protocol that reduces the computational complexity of bridging, reduces the cost by up to 90%. Read More
Wormhole hack illustrates danger of DeFi cross-chain bridges
The second-largest decentralized finance hack to date brings about questions about the Solana ecosystem and cross-chain protocols.
Wormhole is a token bridge protocol that connects multiple blockchain networks like Ethereum, Solana, Terra, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, and Oasis. It enables users to send and receive tokens between these networks without the need for a centralized exchange or tedious conversion processes. While wrapped Ether was the only asset impacted by this exploit, Certik, a smart contract auditing firm, mentioned that Wormhole’s bridge to the Terra blockchain network could be impacted by the same vulnerability as the Solana bridge.
The token bridging protocol has released a detailed incident report that tracks the chronology of the hack and all the associated aspects of it including security audits, bug bounties, and the security roadmap. Cointelegraph discussed this hack with Max Galka, the CEO of blockchain data analytics firm Elementus. He said:
“About three hours before the Ether was taken from Wormhole, the wallet that is currently holding the stolen funds had a smaller transaction deposited from Tornado Cash — a mixer that anonymizes transactions. There was a transfer from a mixer on Ethereum to this wallet now holding the stolen funds.” Read More
The First In The Social Media Marketing Niche
Markethive is building an epic entrepreneurial ecosystem, never seen before and transcendent to other social media and marketing platforms. The transformation is enhanced with our release of the first of many initiatives being the Wheel Of Fortune and the launch of The Boost to follow soon after.
With Markethive now running on its own servers, with the security of Blockchain and its Hivecoin about to be released as a native fungible multi-asset token on Cardano, we have arrived as the first mega decentralized social platform marketing network with the mission is to deliver a decentralized and autonomous environment to the masses, that is not subject to the oppressive technocracy.
Inspired by Binance’s rise in becoming more than a crypto exchange, Markethive goes far beyond by creating a robust ecosystem in the social media and marketing niches. It will deliver very unique aspects to the Markethive exchange by creating niches and exclusivities that no other platform or system has.
As stated by Founder and CEO of Markethive, Thomas Prendergast,
“The transformation has begun. We are releasing our first of many services as we move Markethive into being the most powerful marketing platform in existence, as well as the most powerful Social Network system as well as the most effective broadcasting platform ever built. The Wheel of Fortune is just one of the many major integrations of services coming that entrepreneurs and marketers need and will benefit from. We are building a powerful epic ecosystem never seen before.” Read More
Intel CEO Calls Bitcoin a ‘Climate Crisis’
Amid criticism of Bitcoin’s environmental impact, Intel’s CEO took time to promote the firm’s newest mining chip which he claims to be climate-friendly.
Intel's foray into crypto mining:
Gelsinger said Intel was about to bring forward its new mining chip that would be less harmful to the environment.
Intel's senior vice president, Raja M. Koduri, said last week that this chip "has over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining."
Intel is also expected to reveal more details about the energy-efficient chip at this year's International State Circuits Conference (ISCC).
Thus, while Gelsinger's comments on Bitcoin's climate impact may appear as anti-crypto, he does remain optimistic on what he sees as the sector's underlying technological potential.
"We're going to work on fixing this because this is a powerful technology, an immutable leverageable digitized entry system can transform currency, transactions, supply chains, so yeah, this one's exciting," said the CEO. Read More
In the Web3 Age, Community-Owned Protocols Will Deliver Value to Users
Web3 needs common standards to succeed—which is why 0x is building trusted exchange infrastructure to allow tokenized value to flow across all blockchains.
Web3 promises to herald the next phase of the Internet, in which value will be controlled by the users rather than intermediaries.
But achieving this hinges on building decentralization into the design from the ground up.
Although the traditional for-profit platform business model offered a great deal of value to users initially, its ultimate net effect was to lock users into platforms in order to extract as much value as possible.
The future of trust is directly related to the end of centralization—and that must be developed on open and permissionless platforms.
One project building with that notion firmly in mind is 0x, whose open-source, decentralized exchange protocol created by 0x Labs, aims to serve as the global backbone for decentralized exchange. Having started on Ethereum, it now allows for the peer-to-peer exchange of tokenized assets across a growing number of blockchains including Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Fantom. Read More
Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken, and Other Top Exchanges Join New Anti-Money Laundering Organization
A slew of prominent exchange platforms are joining a new anti-money laundering initiative.
According to a recent blog post by leading crypto exchange Coinbase, it and other popular trading platforms such as BlockFi, Circle, Robinhood, Fidelity Digital Assets, Gemini, and Kraken will join the Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST), a joint solution created to comply with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) Travel Rule.
The Travel Rule requires financial institutions to collect and retain certain information related to funds transfers and transmittals in amounts of $3,000 or more.
According to Coinbase, the TRUST initiative aims to make compliance to the Travel Rule a new industry standard.
“The Travel Rule requires financial institutions to share certain basic information about their customers when sending funds over a certain amount to another financial institution". Read More
Afen, a blockchain company, to digitize tourism in Nigeria
Afen takes a large step towards exploring the metaverse through a smart tourism initiative in partnership with the Plateau State government.
On January 31st, 2022, the approval was received. In an exciting project to digitize tourism on the plateau, Afen will collaborate with the Plateau State smart tourism group (PLA2SMART).
It is worth noting that the Plateau State is one of the most tourist-friendly in Africa. In addition to rocks, mountains, and a game reserve, the state also offers a zoological garden, an ancient temple, and a volcano.
Through this partnership with Afen, the Plateau State Tourism Corporation is exploring ways in which it can improve, sustain, and maintain tourism in the state following government approval to create a new dimension for tourism.
In addition, Afen hopes to use smart tourism to explore the metaverse worldwide as part of its mission to present a new narrative for African society using NFT. Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
