Tag Archive for: declines

Crypto crime declines, but ransomware is on the rise

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The report claims that almost every crypto-related crime is down this year, but ransomware is growing thanks to more successful attacks and a rise in ‘big-game hunting’.

Cryptocurrency-related crime appears to be down significantly compared to last year, according to a new report by Chainalysis.

The blockchain analysis company’s report suggests that illicit activities related to crypto is down by 65pc compared to the same period last year, while deposits made to “risky” entities are down by 42pc.

Chainalysis noted that transaction volumes are down “across the board” but this decline is less severe for legitimate services at 28pc.

“In other words, there’s been a market pullback, but illicit crypto transaction volume is falling much more than legitimate crypto transaction volume,” the company said.

This follows a particularly crime-riddled year for the sector, as a report in January suggested that the level of crypto-based illegal activity in 2022 was the highest on record, with $20.1bn in illegal transactions reported. That report did not include the transaction volumes of several large firms that collapsed last year, including FTX, Celsius and Three Arrows Capital.

Scams take a major hit

In the latest report, Chainalysis said nearly every category of crypto crime is down so far in 2023, but added that scams have dropped the most.

So far this year, crypto scammers took nearly $3.3bn less in 2023 than they did in 2022, a decline of 77pc. The report claims the total amount crypto scams have earned so far in 2023 is just over $1bn.

Chainalyisis claims that scams are “nearly always” the highest-revenue form of crypto-based crime and believes the drop is linked to the disappearance of “two large-scale scams”. The report claims these scams were VidiLook and Chia Tai Tianqing Pharmaceutical Financial Management.

Ransomware on the rise

The only crypto-related crime that looks set to grow this year is ransomware, according to the report.

Chainalysis claims ransomware attackers have extorted $175.8m more this year than they did by the same time in 2022. This also suggests a reversal of the “positive downward ransomware…

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Missouri prosecutor declines to file charges over ‘hacker’ allegation against reporter

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Relief as controversial charges dropped tempered by fears about chilling effect

Missouri prosecutor declines to file charges over 'hacker' allegation against reporter

Missouri’s public prosecutor has decided not to file charges against a journalist accused of illegal hacking over his disclosure of security vulnerabilities in a state government-run website.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud expressed “relief” at the news but said the allegations made against him by Missouri governor Mike Parson in October 2021 could have a “chilling effect” on the good-faith reporting of security flaws.

The accusations centred on Renaud’s discovery of a problem in a domain maintained by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) that potentially exposed more than 100,000 Social Security numbers (SSNs) belonging to teachers and other school staff.

BACKGROUND Missouri governor criticized for confusing vulnerability disclosure with criminal hacking

In a story published on October 13, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that it had notified DESE of the vulnerability and delayed publication of the findings to give the agency time to secure the exposed data.

A number of cybersecurity experts said at the time that this approach to vulnerability disclosure accorded with how professional security researchers routinely alert businesses to security flaws.

Some noted that Renaud’s actions did not even constitute ‘hacking’, since he had simply viewed the site’s HTML source code, which was leaking the sensitive data – something easily done using web browsers’ built-in functionality.

Nevertheless, Governor Parson labelled Renaud a “hacker”, claimed he had violated state computer crime laws, and referred the matter to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which investigated the episode and relayed its findings to Cole County prosecutor Locke Thompson.

However, four months later, on Friday (February 11), Thompson told television station KRCG that he would not be filing charges.

‘Political persecution’

“This decision is a relief. But it does not repair the harm done to me and my family,” Renaud said in a statement (PDF).

“My actions were entirely legal and consistent with established journalistic…

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Trump’s acting intelligence chief declines to meet with Congress for election threats briefing – The Washington Post

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Trump’s acting intelligence chief declines to meet with Congress for election threats briefing  The Washington Post
“cyber warfare news” – read more

Researcher Declines to Share Zero-Day macOS Keychain Exploit with Apple – BleepingComputer

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  1. Researcher Declines to Share Zero-Day macOS Keychain Exploit with Apple  BleepingComputer
  2. Hacker Discovers Zero-day Exploit That Allows for Extraction of All Passwords on macOS Mojave [Video]  iClarified
  3. At least Sony offered a t-shirt, says macOS flaw finder: Bug bounties now for Macs if you want this 0-day, Apple  The Register
  4. New macOS zero-day allows theft of user passwords  ZDNet
  5. macOS Mojave Exploit can reveal encryption keys, passwords – Hashed Out by The SSL Store™  Hashed Out by The SSL Store™
  6. View full coverage on read more

“zero day exploit” – read more