Cyber attacks on cryptocurrency

1) Paper should has 1800 – 2000 words

2) APA Format

3) 8-9 references

4) Topics to be covered: 

      

     

Introduction to crypto-currency (Basics, types of cryptocurrency)

           Background — Covers evolution of cryptocurrency, trading, investing, wallets, algorithms)

           Cryptocurrency Mining

           Security breaches or cyber attacks

           how these breaches resolved

           Solutions 

           Summary, Future directions, conclusions

           References

5) Please make the Power Point Presentation based on the project.

           

            

      

Cyber Attacks on Cryptocurrency

Presented by:
Bhawana
Rambhupal
Pavan Kumar
Instructor:
Prof. Dr. Louai Rahal

1

Cryptocurrency 
Cryptocurrency —  is an electronic money created with technology controlling its creation and protection, while hiding the identities of its users.
The system that makes the currency possible is based on cryptography (“crypto”) and it is meant to be used like a currency (“currency”).
Cryptography is used to
Secure the transactions
Control the creation of new coins
“Cryptocurrency is a general name referring to all encrypted decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin.”

2

Types of Cryptocurrency
Popular Types are:
Bitcoin,
Litecoin, and
Ethereum’s Ether.
Popular Exchanges/brokers are:
Coinbase,
GDAX (Coinbase Pro),
Bittrex,
ShapeShift, and
Kraken

Background
Bitcoin is the most popular and widely used cryptocurrency.
2009: Bitcoin announced by Satoshi Nakamoto
Pseudonym for person or group of person
2009-2011: Had a slow start
End 2013: Bitcoin price skyrockets: and the world notices!

4

How Cryptocurrency is traded
through blockchain Technology

Wallets
A cryptocurrency wallet is a software program that stores private and public keys and interacts with various blockchain to enable users to send and receive digital currency and monitor their balance.
If you want to use Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency you will need to have a digital wallet.
Unlike traditional ‘pocket’ wallets, digital wallets don’t store currency.
All that exists are records of transactions stored on the blockchain.

Wallets
To be able to spend those coins and unlock the funds, the private key stored in your wallet must match the public address the currency is assigned to.
If public and private keys match, the balance in your digital wallet will increase, and the senders will decrease accordingly.
There is no actual exchange of real coins.
The transaction is signified merely by a transaction record on the blockchain and a change in balance in your cryptocurrency wallet.

Crypto Mining
As there is no central authority or central bank, there has to be a way of gathering every transaction carried out with a cryptocurrency in order to create a new block.
Network nodes that carry out this task called dubbed ‘miners’.
Every time a slew of transactions is amassed into a block, this is appended to the blockchain.
Whoever appends the block gets rewarded with some of that cryptocurrency.
To prevent the devaluation of the currency by miners building lots of blocks, the task is made harder to conduct.
This is achieved by making miners solve complicated mathematical problems called ‘proof of work’.

Mining Software:
Bitcoin Miner
BTCMiner
CGMiner
BFGMiner
EasyMiner
RPCMiner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmOzih6I1zs

Crypto Mining Process

Examples of Cyber Attacks to Cryptocurrencies: Ethereum
Hackers stole $7 Million worth of Ethereum in just 3 minutes.
Hackers also stole money from the Israeli social-trading platform CoinDash while it launched an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to allow investors to pay with Ethereum and send funds to token sale’s smart contact address.
The hackers were able to divert over $7 million worth of Ethereum by replacing the legitimate wallet address used for the ICO with their own.

Examples of Cyber Attacks to Cryptocurrencies: inputs.io
October 2013, online Bitcoin wallet service inputs.io was hacked twice.
A total of 4,100 Bitcoins, worth about $1.2 million at the time were stolen via a social engineering attack, gaining access to inputs.io’s systems hosted on Linode, a cloud-hosting provider.
By compromising a series of email accounts, beginning with an email account that the inputs.io founder had set up six years prior to the attack, the hacker managed to gain access to the site’s account on Linode and reset the site’s account password.

Examples of Cyber Attacks to Cryptocurrencies: 51% Attack
It is one of the bitcoin network’s most dangerous weaknesses, but not a security breach.
When an individual or a group of individuals owns more than 50% of the computing power within the bitcoin network, the network is opened up to the possibility of a 51% attack – the advantage in computing power can be used to fork the main transaction blockchain and commit fraud.
In January, Ghash.io, a mining pool, began approaching that 50% limit.
The situation was resolved without incident, due to miners leaving Ghash.io for smaller pools, as well as the pool’s own decision to stop accepting new miners.

Mining Applications:
Coinhive – A popular mining application which many hackers have been able to install on victims’ devices without permission, using up their battery and compute power.
For instance, Android apps were found encoded with malicious mining capabilities.
In these cases, the JavaScript runs code making this process invisible to the user.
Efforts:
Google added specific protections in Chrome
Anti-virus firms have updated software to detect and disable unauthorised mining applications.
Coinhive has also put measures in place to ask users for their permission to mine, protecting against hackers.

Ransomware Payments:
Last year, 54% of UK companies experienced ransomware attacks.
WannaCry Attack: was the largest ransomware attack in history, affecting Windows systems all over the world, including many used by the NHS.
The hackers behind the NHS attack demanded ransom payments in the form of bitcoins.
Payments are untraceable as they do not link back to bank accounts or addresses.
To collect the ransoms paid in crypto-currency, some hackers have gone as far as to create a QR code that contains a Bitcoin wallet address.

Resolving Cyber Attacks on Cryptocurrencies
Blockchain provides a fundamentally different approach to cybersecurity, which can go beyond endpoints and include user identity security, transaction and communication security and the protection of critical infrastructure that supports operations across organizations.
The paradigm shift represented by blockchain can provide the transparency and auditing that will enable us to make the most use of shared online services, while eliminating the potential security and privacy trade-offs.

Solutions
In response to the string of incidents in cryptocurrency domain the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued an official warning about the risks of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).
China has already announced a ban on all ICO across the country.
The number of attacks will increase in the future and crooks will increase their pressure on end-users, launching a malware-based campaign to steal funds from unprotected wallets.

Summary
With the increase of popularity and use of cryptocurrencies, it is likely that illegal activities will be on the rise.
These include the hack of websites to deploy crypto-mining scripts and cyber-attacks against unprotected miner machines exposed online.

Future Directions
Cryptocurrencies will receive more patronage from institutional investors.
Cryptocurrencies may be regulated in the future.
Cryptocurrencies will cease being volatile.
However, it may end up going against the original spirit of bitcoin.

Conclusions
Despite Bitcoin’s reoccuring issues, its success since its 2009 launch has inspired the creation of alternative cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Ripple, Dash and others.
Although a cryptocurrency that aspires to become part of the mainstream financial system would have to satisfy very divergent criteria, while that possibility looks remote, there is little doubt that Bitcoin’s success or failure in dealing with the challenges it faces may determine the fortunes of other cryptocurrencies in the years ahead.

References
Vigna, P. C. M. (2016). Cryptocurrency.
Narayanan, A., Bonneau, J., Felten, E., Miller, A., & Goldfeder, S. (2016). Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies: A comprehensive introduction. andom House UK.
Law Library of Congress (U.S.). (2018). Regulation of cryptocurrency around the world.
Dannen, C. (2017). Introducing ethereum and solidity: Foundations of cryptocurrency and blockchain programming for beginners.