Ethereum-based adult entertainment platform SpankChain confirmed that it had recovered all the funds lost during a security breach October 6. In a series of tweets Friday, Oct. 12, officials said that after speaking by telephone with the hacker who stole 165 ETH ($32,000) from the project’s smart contract, he had agreed to return the amount in full. SpankChain had notified users about the breach a day after it occurred, promising to instigate reimbursements of lost money to affected investors. Of the total losses, only around $9,000 consisted of customer funds, it said. Linking to a transaction confirming the transfer, SpankChain …

Losses caused by cryptocurrency exchange hacks hit $927 million in the first nine months of 2018, already 250 percent higher than throughout all of 2017, Reuters India reports October 10. Reuters cites a Crypto Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) report for Q3 2018 from crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace, which pitted the $927 million figure against last year’s $266 million total. According to the report, “smaller” thefts of crypto worth between $20-60 million are also steadily rising, hitting $173 million in the third quarter. Reuters interviewed CipherTrace CEO Dave Jevans, who is also chairman of the global anti-cybercrime organization, the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Jevans …

Hacked Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif has announced an official plan to provide financial support for affected customers’ assets, in an official notice posted today, October 10. As previously reported, the exchange suffered a security breach Sept. 14, resulting in total losses of cryptocurrencies worth 6.7 billion yen (around $59.7 million). At the time, Zaif operator Tech Bureau Inc. indicated it would be working with Fisco Digital Asset Group to draft a joint support plan. Today’s notice clarifies that the terms of the basic agreement between the two firms have been in formal negotiation as of Sept. 20., and initially stipulated …

Ethereum-based adult entertainment platform SpankChain has suffered a smart contract security breach that led to loss of around $38,000, the firm reported on its Medium page Oct. 9. The hack, which purportedly took place Oct. 6, was detected by SpankChain a day after, and was announced today in a post entitled “We Got Spanked: What We Know So Far.” Anonymous attackers managed to steal 165.38 Ethereum (ETH) or around $38,000 from the platform’s payment channel smart contract. Additionally, the security breach caused the immobilization of $4,000 worth of the SpankChain’s internal token called BOOTY. While most of lost or immobilized …

A recent report by security company Banbreach has found that in the past month, the number of routers compromised by cryptojacking software in India has doubled. The report indicates that hackers have cracked over 30,000 routers within the country, Hard Fork reported Oct. 5. Banbreach managed to track Internet traffic and detect all devices on the Internet with public IP addresses, which made it possible to examine traffic passing through routers. In the course of its research, Banbreach grouped populated areas of India into three categories from most to least dense. According to the report, 45 percent of the infected …

Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes has found that scammers are using malware that targets the Bitcoin (BTC) wallet addresses of Fortnite gamers, according to a post published October 2. Fortnite is currently one of the most popular video games in the world, with reports suggesting that 125 million people are active players. Malwarebytes has investigated the game’s online ecosystem and found that “con artists” are sneaking malicious data theft code into downloads that apparently promise “free” season six Fortnite Android versions, among other “bogus cheats, wallhacks and aimbots.” So-called “free V-Bucks” – an in-game currency that can be used to purchase additional …

The self-regulatory Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA) plans to stricten its customer asset management measures. The Japan Times outlet reported this news Sunday, September 30, citing “informed sources.” JVCEA is a self-regulatory group of some of the largest licensed exchange operators in Japan, established in April of this year. Now, the organization is reportedly planning to tighten its rules by establishing a limit on the amount of digital currencies that can be managed online by any exchange. According to The Japan Times’ sources, the limit will likely be set at around 10 to 20 percent of customer deposits. JVCEA …

Gone are the days when shady dealings in crypto were perceived as immune to the clutches of law enforcement. Illicit crypto proceeds can be shuttled between wallet addresses at the click of a mouse, and their obfuscation behind the multiple strings of numbers and letters of wallet addresses can create a dizzying — if not impenetrable — cryptographic maze for authorities to navigate. But the criminals themselves present a more concrete target, and as they interface with everything from crafty code to unwieldy hardware to ‘traditional’ firearms, there has been some success in 2018 in nabbing some of the year’s …

This week, the developers of Monero (XMR) patched a bug that could allow an attacker to ‘burn’ the funds of an organization’s wallet. The breach was initially revealed by a community member, and XMR developers were quick enough to fix it before any damage was done. Anonymity above all: How Monero works Simply put, Monero (XMR) is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin (BTC), but with an additional focus on anonymity. It was established in 2014, when bitcointalk.org user thankful_for_today forked the codebase of Bytecoin into the name BitMonero. To establish the new coin, he used ideas that were first outlined in …

The number of crypto mining malware attacks used by hackers has continued rising, with total samples growing by 86% in the second quarter of 2018, according to the latest threat report by cybersecurity firm McAfee Labs released September 25. In the report, cybersecurity experts stated more that than 2.5 million new malware coin miner samples were found in Q2. In comparison, the number of crypto malware attacks in Q1 amounted to around 2.9 million, which is a 629 percent rise from around the 400,000 samples found in Q4 2017. The report concluded that coin miner malware “remains very active,” following …

The developers of open-source cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) have patched a bug that could allow an attacker to “burn” the funds of an organization’s wallet while only losing network transaction fees, according to an announcement published September 25. The bug was reportedly discovered after a community member described a hypothetical attack on the XMR subreddit. The bug could purportedly affect merchants and organizations in the XMR ecosystem, enabling an attacker to trigger significant damage. The blog post further describes how the bug would be exploited: “An attacker first generates a random private transaction key. Thereafter, they modify the code to merely …

The Financial Services Agency (FSA) of Japan has launched an investigation after $60 million worth of cryptocurrencies were allegedly stolen from local crypto exchange Zaif, Cointelegraph Japan reports Friday, September 21. According to the report, the FSA has sent its staff to Tech Bureau — Zaif's parent company based in Osaka — to verify whether the company will be able to cover customer losses. As Cointelegraph Japan has learnеd, the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA) has urged all local crypto exchanges to conduct an immediate inspection of their security protocols. Following the notice, exchanges BitFlyer and Quoine reported they …