Blockchain Cyber Security News | Cyber Security in Blockchain

Nomad raises £18.4m for secure cross-chain DeFi protocol

DeFi cross-chain interoperability protocol Nomad has secured a $22.4 million (£18.4m) seed round from leading investors in the crypto industry.

Crypto investment firm Polychain led the round, with Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, OpenSea, Wintermute, Gnosis, Algaé and Polygon all participating too.

This financing round will be used to expand Nomad to other blockchains, helping it create a more secure cross-chain bridge encryption ecosystem, where different...

28 July 2022 | Cyber Security

Massive data breach leaves OpenSea users’ email addresses vulnerable

OpenSea, the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, has warned its users after discovering an employee of email management platform Customer.io has leaked OpenSea customer’s emails to a third party.

Any user who has their email address registered with OpenSea, whether it’s for the platform or its newsletter, has been affected by the breach.

OpenSea has since warned all of its users to watch out for potential phishing attempts and has reported the incident to...

30 June 2022 | Cyber Security

OpenSea adds new security features amidst NFT market downturn

OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace, has announced a new security feature to protect its users from the growing number of scams in the NFT space.

It comes at a time when the company is under increasing fire for the proliferation of stolen and plagiarised NFTs passing through its site.

The feature will automatically hide suspicious NFT transfers from being viewed on the OpenSea marketplace. The company hopes this will help to protect users from falling for scam...

14 June 2022 | Cyber Security

Axie Infinity network loses £468m in largest ever DeFi hack

Axie Infinity, one of the biggest success stories in the world of blockchain-based gaming, has become the victim of the largest decentralised finance (DeFi) hack in history.

The Pokémon-style NFT battler saw $615 million (£468m) stolen from its Ronin Network – the Ethereum sidechain created to run the game’s transactions – on March 23.

It took a user being unable to withdraw 5,000 ether (£12m) on March 29 for Ronin to realise that 173,600 ether (£448m) and 25.5...

30 March 2022 | Cyber Security

Crypto-based crime outpaced by total market’s growth in 2021

Crypto-based crime hit an all-time high in 2021, but the growth of the digital assets market as a whole far surpassed the rise in illicit activity.

A record $14 billion (£10.4bn) flooded into crypto wallets with criminal associations in 2021, more than doubling from the previous year, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

Whilst this 79% increase may seem substantial, total market transaction volume grew by 567% from 2020’s totals. This leaves...

6 January 2022 | Cyber Security

BitMart begins to resume withdrawals four days after $196m hack

Crypto exchange BitMart resumed Ether withdrawals and deposits in the early morning of December 8, four days after hackers stole $196 million (£148m) of assets.

On December 4, BitMart claimed hackers withdrew $150m (£113m) of crypto in a “large-scale security breach”. However, blockchain analytics firm Peckshield, who first publicised the hack, believe the real figure is closer to $200m (£151m).

In a statement on December 6, the exchange confirmed it had completed...

8 December 2021 | Cryptocurrency

Phishing attack leaves at least 6,000 Coinbase accounts breached

A suspected phishing attack has led to at least 6,000 of Coinbase’s users having cryptocurrency stolen from their accounts.

The Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange sent a breach notification letter to affected customers notifying them of the hack, which is believed who have taken place between March and 20 May this year.

The hackers gained access to users’ email addresses, passwords, and phone numbers, but Coinbase has said they cannot confirm how exactly this data was...

6 October 2021 | Cryptocurrency

Telefónica Tech launch document verification service using blockchain

Telefónica Tech, the Madrid-based telecoms company behind O2 and Vivo, has launched its own blockchain-based document certification service.

The new service utilises Telefónica’s in-house TrustOS platform to generate certificates that combine the digital signature of the user with a trace of the content to be certified, alongside a time stamp to establish the date of certification.

It will allow companies to generate digital evidence of authorship, ownership, and...

2 September 2021 | Blockchain Applications

Is blockchain the key to trust in social media?

The Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 drew massive attention to the way in which social media companies handle their users’ private data.

At the time, details regarding how Facebook had been providing users' personal information to third parties made the headlines around the globe, and caused the public to think more carefully about what happens to the personal data they offer social media firms.

Since then, it seems that trust in social media companies has...