Security News
In what's the latest crypto heist to target the decentralized finance space, hackers have stolen digital assets worth around $160 million from crypto trading firm Wintermute. The hack involved a series of unauthorized transactions that transferred USD Coin, Binance USD, Tether USD, Wrapped ETH, and 66 other cryptocurrencies to the attacker's wallet.
Cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute says $160 million in digital assets have been stolen from it in a cyber-heist, though it assures customers that everything's fine. CEO Evgeny Gaevoy admitted on Twitter that Wintermute was suffering from an "Ongoing hack" affecting its decentralized finance operations, while its centralized finance and over-the-counter trading operations were unaffected.
Digital assets trading firm Wintermute has been hacked and lost $162.2 million in DeFi operations, the company CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy, announced earlier today. Wintermute provides liquidity to over 50 cryptocurrency exchanges and trading platforms, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitfinex.
Group-IB has noted a fivefold increase in the number of domains used for crypto giveaway scams that involve fake YouTube streams in the first half of 2022. Crypto giveaway scams have evolved into an illicit market segment with multiple services that aim to facilitate fraudulent operations.
The Dutch police arrested a 39-year-old man on suspicions of laundering tens of millions of euros worth of cryptocurrency stolen in phishing attacks. The arrest occurred in the early morning of September 6, 2022, with the police seizing devices and "Data carriers" to aid the ongoing investigations.
The US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security has relaxed restrictions that barred export of some encryption technologies to Huawei, in the name of ensuring the United States is in a better position to negotiate global standards. A Thursday announcement [PDF] explains the decision was taken because American businesses have told the Biden administration they're confused about whether they need to seek a license before bringing some tech to standards talks.
It's said that the pair promoted the idea at a conference in 2018 and a few news outlets picked up on that plan and suggested Rongelap could become "The new Hong Kong.". In a May 2021 publication [PDF] the IMF noted the proposal to create a digital economic zone on Rongelap and characterized it as "Envisioned to focus on virtual means of exchange, including virtual assets."
The National Police of Ukraine took down a network of call centers used by a cybercrime group focused on financial scams and targeting victims of cryptocurrency scams under the guise of helping them recover their stolen funds. The fraudsters behind these illegal call centers were also allegedly involved in scamming citizens of Ukraine and European Union countries interested in cryptocurrency, securities, gold, and oil investments.
Watch out: someone is spreading cryptocurrency-mining malware disguised as legitimate-looking applications, such as Google Translate, on free software download sites and through Google searches. "The malware is dropped from applications that are popular, but don't have an actual desktop version, such as Google Translate, keeping the malware versions in demand and exclusive," Check Point malware analyst Moshe Marelus wrote in a report Monday.
The campaign entails serving malware through free software hosted on popular sites such as Softpedia and Uptodown. In an interesting tactic, the malware puts off its execution for weeks and separates its malicious activity from the downloaded fake software to avoid detection.