Cryptocurrency Technology Recap Bitcoin: In the latest Bitcoin build, deployers now have a full example bitcoin.conf shipped with each release! If needed, there is also now a script to generate one yourself. As of block 735000, we are halfway through Bitcoin’s 4th mining epoch and less than two years away from the annual inflation rate dropping below 1%.…
Cryptocurrency Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Bitcoin Core v23.0 has been released! This release includes wallet updates with Taproot support, descriptor wallets set as default, ability to indefinitely freeze a UTXO, updates to P2P communications and more! C-Lightning has been rebranded to Core Lightning (CLN). Blockstream aims that CLN will better communicate their focus on interoperability, specification work, and ongoing implementation…
Standoff between Poly Network and Hacker over keys to multisig wallet Aug 18 Update: In an August 17 Medium article, the Poly Network team announced that they had offered the hacker, whom they refer to as “Mr. White Hat,” the position of Chief Security Officer along with a $500,000 bounty for identifying the exploit. In… Read more
TL;DR: Iron.Finance depends on arbitrage as their stabilizing mechanism for partially collateralized tokens. In the case of the TITAN token collapse, the time frame between its price feed oracle and the actual real-time prices of the market was too large causing users to become unprofitable and not protect the stabilization. As a result, TITAN dropped…
On April 13, 2021, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Working Group released the Crypto-Asset Exchange Security Guidelines—a set of guidelines and best practices for crypto-asset exchange (CaE) security. The set of guidelines were created to help educate users, policymakers, and cybersecurity professionals on the pros and cons of further securing Virtual Asset Service…
In a December 9 CipherTrace-ACFCS Webinar on “How Cryptocurrency Intelligence Tipped the Scales in 2020 Sanctions Evasion,” over 500 attendees from various Financial Institutions were asked if they felt confident detecting cryptocurrency related payments flowing through their institutions and/or investigations. Over three-quarters—78.2%—of attendees responded that they do not feel confident in detecting crypto-related payments flowing…
I would like to address the issue of the privacy of cryptocurrency transactions, and the role of cryptocurrency tracing companies in helping the world of crypto become safer, more widespread, and more legitimate, while still preserving the privacy of individuals. There have been opinions expressed on Twitter and Reddit that cryptocurrency tracing companies are violating…
CipherTrace has previously reported on North Korea using cybercrime to avert economic sanctions and raise hard cash to fund its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) development. For example, in August 2017, we revealed details of a then unreleased UN research report to the Security Council that showed how North Korean state actors had, over a…
If you travel a lot – especially during January 2020, which was National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month – you likely saw ads exhorting you to look out for evidence of human trafficking and report what you see to the authorities. Ads like these are great for raising general awareness of the very real…
CipherTrace Integration into Maltego Significantly Expands Bitcoin Forensics Capabilities Maltego is a popular security research and forensics tool produced by Paterva. Investigators use it as a powerful data mining tool because it allows them to create directed graphs that combine disparate digital forensics, perform a deeper analysis, and gain a more comprehensive perspective. Maltego focuses… Read more