Greek Police arrested a Russian man and accused him of running the BTC-e Bitcoin exchange to launder more than US$4bn worth of the cryptocurrency. Greek Police have arrested the Russian national Alexander Vinnik (38) and they accuse the man of running the BTC-e Bitcoin exchange to launder more than US$4bn worth of the cryptocurrency. The police seized two la

Earlier this month, news broke that authorities had seized the Dark Web marketplace AlphaBay, an online black market that peddled everything from heroin to stolen identity and credit card data. But it wasn’t until today, when the U.S. Justice Department held a press conference to detail the AlphaBay takedown that the other shoe dropped: Police in The N

We all remember the devastating WannaCry ransomware attack that struck organizations around the world in May 2017. The attack spread at a rate of almost 3,600 computers per hour, or about one per second. When all was said and done, the ransomware infected more than 300,000 devices. Many victims simply paid the ransom to retrieve their locked files. This only

Bithumb, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin and Ether crypto currencies exchanges, has been hacked. Over $1 Million worth Bitcoin and Ether stolen. Bithumb, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin and Ether crypto currencies exchanges, has been hacked. The hackers have stolen more than $1 Million in crypto currencies from the accounts of several users

A new strain of ransomware dubbed “Petya” is worming its way around the world with alarming speed. The malware is spreading using a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that the software giant patched in March 2017 — the same bug that was exploited by the recent and prolific WannaCry ransomware strain. The ransom note that gets displayed on s

After the WannaCry attack, no fewer than five threat research companies pounced on the fact that the ransomers were demanding to be paid in bitcoin. However, they completely glossed over the concept behind the malware itself. Within days, theorists came out of the woodwork to characterize the attack as some kind of subtle terrorist or government-backed opera

A new report proves the value of following the money in the fight against dodgy cybercrime services known as “booters” or “stressers” — virtual hired muscle that can be rented to knock nearly any website offline. Last fall, two 18-year-old Israeli men were arrested for allegedly running vDOS, perhaps the most successful booter s

On Friday, May 12, 2017, the world was alarmed to discover that cybercrime had achieved a new record. In a widespread ransomware attack that hit organizations in more than 100 countries within the span of 48 hours, the operators of malware known as WannaCry/WanaCrypt0r 2.0 are believed to have caused the biggest attack of its kind ever recorded. Perhaps more

As thousands of organizations work to contain and clean up the mess from this week’s devastating Wana ransomware attack, the fraudsters responsible for releasing the digital contagion are no doubt counting their earnings and congratulating themselves on a job well done. But according to a review of the Bitcoin addresses hard-coded into Wana, it appears

Blockchain news is seemingly everywhere these days, and for good reason. The technology behind bitcoin holds a lot of promise for all sorts of use cases — some of them having nothing to do with digital payments. Over the course of last year, a lot of ideas regarding the technology were tried out, but “during 2017, many of them will be discarded,̶

There is much chatter about blockchain and how it could impact the way we do business today. Arvind Krishna, senior vice president at IBM Research, said that “over the past two decades, the internet has revolutionized many aspects of business and society … Blockchain could bring to those processes the openness and efficiency we have come to expec

A school located in Los Angeles County, California has paid computer criminals 28,000 USD after it suffered a ransomware attack.Officials at Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) came to the decision after a ransomware infection left them with no way to recover their organization’s encrypted data.As the school explains in an update (PDF):“In consulta

An attacker is obtaining access to unprotected MongoDB databases, stealing and erasing their content, and holding them for ransom.On 27 December, security researcher Victor Gevers came across a MongoDB server that was open to external connections and that lacked a password on its admin account.This database didn’t contain a lot of information. In fact,

Financial institutions, real estate brokers, law firms and other organizations with an interest in trust-based transactions will be swarming blockchain in 2017, and you can bet regulators will be right behind them. The end of 2016 marks blockchain’s evolution from niche curiosity to corporate up-and-comer as institutions seek ways to benefit from reduc

On 28 October, the cryptocurrency world saw the emergence of a new player, the Zcash (ZEC) cryptocurrency. Its developers have described it rather figuratively: “If Bitcoin is like HTTP for money, Zcash is HTTPS.” They continue by noting that “unlike Bitcoin, Zcash transactions can be shielded to hide the sender, the recipient and value of