Cryptojackers are hitting pay dirt in India, according to Microsoft's newly released Security Endpoint Threat Report 2019. The report states that web users in India encounter crypto mining malware attacks at a rate 4.6 times higher than the regional and global average. India experiences the second-largest number of cryptocurrency mining attacks in the Asia Pacific region, lagging only behind Sri Lanka. A cryptocurrency mining attack, commonly called cryptojacking, is an attack where hackers secretly install cryptocurrency mining malware on someone else's computer to use its computing power to mine cryptocurrencies. Attackers’ sentiments are pegged to crypto prices Cryptojacking practices saw …

July 15 will go down as an infamous day for Twitter, as an unknown attacker managed to take control of a number of accounts on the social media platform before duping unwary users into a Bitcoin giveaway hoax. The event grabbed media attention, as some of the world’s most notable companies, politicians and business leaders had their accounts compromised before sharing similar messages touting a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway that required users to send coins to an address before receiving double that amount back. The likes of Tesla founder Elon Musk, former United States president Barack Obama, 2020 U.S. presidential candidate …

Microsoft Security Intelligence alerted users to a type of ransomware, called Avaddon, that uses Excel 4.0 macros to distribute malicious emails. These emails contain attachments which deploy an attack when opened in any version of Excel. Avaddon ransomware emerged in early June through a massive spam campaign that randomly targeted its victims. Some patterns seem to indicate that the ransomware mostly targets Italian users. Impersonating Italian officials As BleepingComputer reports, the attackers behind the ransomware are recruiting “affiliates” to spread the payload. According to their analysis, Avaddon’s average ransom amount is around $900, paid in crypto. The attack commonly impersonates …

Blockchain technology has proliferated in a number of industries outside of the cryptocurrency space in the decade since Bitcoin’s (BTC) inception. The underlying technology of the preeminent cryptocurrency went under the radar in the early years of cryptocurrency adoption before projects such as Ethereum began to explore the range of possibilities of blockchain networks. While many startups looked to harness blockchain technology to power new cryptocurrencies, a number of mainstream technology firms began building their own enterprise blockchain systems that could be rolled out. IBM and Microsoft are giants in the information technology space and have led the development of …

Microsoft announced on June 10 that it had discovered a number of cryptojacking attacks on powerful machine-learning clusters on its Azure cloud computing network. In a blog-post, the company said that some customers had misconfigured nodes, allowing attackers to hijack them to mine the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR). Default settings overridden Microsoft said that it had discovered tens of clusters affected by the attack, which targets a machine learning toolkit, Kubeflow, for the open-source Kubernetes platform. By default the dashboard to control Kubeflow is only accessible internally from the node, so users need to use port-forwarding to tunnel in via …

Microsoft’s decentralized identity network ION, first announced in May is moving to beta testing on the Bitcoin network. In a June 10 blog post, Daniel Buchner, a program manager for the Microsoft Identity team, said the open-sourced, layer 2 Identity Overlay Network (ION) had launched. The aim is to provide users with a decentralized identifier (DID) that could replace the need for usernames. Developed in conjunction with the Decentralized Identity Foundation, ION was developed as a decentralized network to operate independently and doesn’t rely on “special utility tokens, trusted validator nodes, or additional consensus mechanisms”. “The core promise of DID …

The Baseline Protocol has launched integrations for Google Sheets and Microsoft Dynamics 365. The new function allows for the maintenance of verifiably consistent records using a spreadsheet in conjunction with an enterprise resource planning solution. Baseline published a proof-of-concept on Monday, demonstrating the "baselining" of spreadsheet data to verify that multiple independent private databases hold the same records. The Baseline Protocol was launched in March and was developed through collaboration between Microsoft, EY and ConsenSys. The concept used baselining to verify that the records held by separate entities’ databases were verifiably identical while allowing company information to “remain in traditional …

Microsoft, IBM, Nasdaq and a number of other technology and financial organizations from around the world recently formed the InterWork Alliance, or IWA. The alliance, which currently consists of 36 members, serves as a non-profit organization dedicated to creating global standards needed to drive tokenized ecosystems. Microsoft’s principal architect and the IWA chairman, Marley Gray, told Cointelegraph that any expression of value in any vertical or use case can be rendered as a token. Cryptocurrencies, for example, are one of the many types of tokens that can be exchanged across multiple parties, creating a tokenized ecosystem. Yet as tokenized environments …

With Germany aiming to decommission all nuclear power generation in the country by 2022 and all coal-fired stations by 2038, myriad disparate renewable energy producers of various sizes are stepping up to meet demand. Distributed ledger technology is increasingly underpinning the architecture for many systems being designed by the country’s innovative renewable energy providers. Cointelegraph spoke to Richard Lohwasser, the co-founder and CEO of Lition Energie — a Berlin-based greentech startup that has launched a blockchain-based marketplace allowing consumers to choose between multiple energy providers — to discuss how DLT is being used across Germany’s evolving energy sector. A blockchain-powered …

Microsoft’s principal architect, Marley Gray, and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s former executive director, Ron Resnick, on Tuesday launched the InterWork Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at bringing global standards to the token-based ecosystem. At launch, the IWA included more than 28 blockchain, technology and financial organizations from around the world, including Microsoft, Chainlink, Hyperledger, IBM, Nasdaq, Accenture and others. The IWA indicated that startups presently working on tokenized ecosystems are mostly focusing on their individual solutions and marketing their platforms to other businesses. Setting global standards, it said, will help focus this wide-scale innovation to make a collective impact on businesses. …

According to a claim by Harvard Business Review, blockchain will do to banks what the internet did to the media. When it comes to the banks and financial organizations of today, blockchain has the potential to solve a host of problems. Blockchain technology possesses nearly all the attractive characteristics needed by a reliable technology involving money. It is safe, secure, decentralized, transparent and relatively cheaper. Blockchain’s potential in financial services is significant and has several applications, spanning payments, capital markets, trade services, investment and wealth management as well as securities and commodities exchanges. Blockchain technology is tipped to be one …

Oscar-winning Russian director, Nikita Mikhalkov, has espoused a bizarre conspiracy theory on local television. He claims that Microsoft’s recent patent for a sensor-based cryptocurrency mining system using body activity data comprises the first-step in a satanic plot to microchip the human race. On an episode of ‘Besogan TV,’ which roughly translates to ‘demon basher TV,’ Mikhalkov claimed the patent number of Microsoft’s cryptocurrency system — WO/2020/060606 — alludes to the occult nature of the technology. “The 060606 part is somewhat alarming. You probably understand this, right? Is this a coincidence or an intentional selection of such a symbol, which in …