Security News
Unlike the original Create opcode, which generated new addresses based on the creator's address and nonce, Create2 allows calculating addresses before the deployment of the contract. It's a powerful tool for Ethereum developers, enabling advanced and flexible contract interactions, parameter-based contract address pre-calculation, deployment flexibility, suitability for off-chain transactions and certain dApps.
A U.S. court has sentenced former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith to five years and three months in prison and pay a $100,000 fine for conspiring with North Korea to help use cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions imposed on the country. "There is no question North Korea poses a national security threat to our nation, and the regime has shown time and again it will stop at nothing to ignore our laws for its own benefit," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Virgil Griffith, a US cryptocurrency expert, was sentenced on Tuesday to 63 months in prison after pleading guilty to assisting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with technical info on how to evade sanctions. Griffith, who worked as a special projects developer and research scientist for the Ethereum Foundation, was arrested in November 2019 by the FBI following a presentation in North Korea on how the country could use cryptocurrency and blockchain tech to launder money and evade sanctions.
Cybersecurity software company NortonLifeLock is coming under fire for its decision late last year to begin installing Ethereum mining software on its Norton 360 customers' PCs without their permission or knowledge. Norton Crypto, the new Norton 360 mining component, isn't enabled without the user opting in, but that hasn't stopped users from taking to Norton's Crypto forum to register their discontent, and they aren't all upset about the sneaky installation.
Norton 360 can now mine Ethereum. It’s opt-in, and the company keeps 15%. It’s hard to uninstall this option.
Norton antivirus's inbuilt cryptominer has re-entered the public consciousness after a random Twitter bod expressed annoyance at how difficult it is to uninstall. Exe, Norton 360's signed cryptocurrency-mining binary, to installations of Norton antivirus isn't new - but it seems to have taken the non-techie world a few months to realise what's going on.
A US citizen has admitted to helping the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to establish cryptocurrency capabilities and faces up to 20 years jail for his actions. The DoJ alleges Griffith and his co-conspirators "Provided instruction on how the DPRK could use blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to launder money and evade sanctions," and "How blockchain technology such as 'smart contracts' could be used to benefit the DPRK, including in nuclear weapons negotiations with the United States."
Griffith, who worked as a special projects dev and researcher for the Ethereum Foundation, was arrested in November 2019 by the FBI. Advice on how to evade sanctions and launder money. His arrest happened after he traveled to North Korea to give a presentation on how to use cryptocurrency and blockchain tech to launder money and evade sanctions.
The chain-split vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-39137, impacts "Geth," the official Golang implementation of the Ethereum protocol. Such flaws can cause corruption in blockchain services, and lead to massive outages, like the Ethereum network outage from last year.
Last week, NortonLifelock announced that the Norton 360 antivirus suite would soon be able to mine Ethereum cryptocurrency while the computer is idle. The Norton Crypto announcement was met with a wide range of responses, ranging from ridicule to exasperation, that an antivirus software would offer cryptocurrency mining.