Hacker Hits Reddit’s Automated Email Service, Robs Users of Bitcoin Cash Tips
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Each week we select the 3 news items that matter and explain why and link to one expert opinion. For the intro to this weekly series, please go here. Traditionally, pre-IPO investment opportunities in top-performing companies are only available to investment firms. Spice launched its initial coin offering ICO for a VC fund that can accept funds from pre-qualified investors, offering immediate liquidity.
Spice uses the Ethereum blockchain to host its token. Its token acts as a digital security, guaranteeing that every investor gets their share of the exits when they occur. The token itself can also be used as a tradable asset, making the investment liquid. These efforts are alleviating some of the shortcomings in the venture funding model using tokenization. Investing in exciting tech startups is usually reserved for those that can afford to forget their capital for a while.
Investors potentially can benefit from reduced risk, greater flexibility, and a shorter investment period than traditional venture capital funds. In an age where ICOs have become commonplace, these venture fund tokens can offer a tangible way to invest in real-world startups that have the potential of delivering a return, providing greater liquidity, and attracting more potential investors.
As many as a dozen or more ERC smart contracts have been found to contain the batchOverflow bug. In short, the attackers managed to print a virtually unlimited number of tokens out of thin air. What this means is that by flooding the system with a number too large for use an attacker could create an additional supply of tokens that do not exist within the system. For exchanges, this presents an immense attack, as token minting can occur without necessary sanity checks that properly assure issuance of the token.
In relevant transactions, this will appear to mint tokens out of seemingly nothing. The exploit was first observed on the 22nd of April, when octodecillion BEC Beauty Coin was created in two transactions. Many exchanges, including OKEx, Changelly, and Poloniex, initially suspended ERC20 deposits across the board while they investigate the issue and rolled back some trades involving the fraudulently-created tokens.
Large exchanges, like Binance did not suspend ERC20 activity. Recently, Binance audited ERC20 tokens listed on exchange and found out that all of them are safe and not affected by the recent vulnerability that was found in most of the ERC20 tokens. It is not easy to develop an Ethereum based token that is completely free of bugs. In a research published last year, some researchers claimed that they had discovered that 34, of the Ethereum smart contracts were vulnerable to bugs.
While the hacker behind the exploit has been unsuccessful in this specific case, the presence of this exploit in the market is a clear sign that the extremely broad spectrum of ERC20 tokens, must be more rigorous with the manner in which smart contract functionality is implemented.
With billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency going through different exchanges every day, exchanges are natural targets for hackers and criminals. Anyone that has ever coded knows that software is never bug free, but blockchain bugs could be a very expensive proposition.
Redditwhich hosts communities for every single cryptocurrency in the world, is hoping to bring back crypto payments to the platform, this time with Ethereum and Litecoin in addition to Bitcoin, according to CTO KeyserSosa. The company is actively working with Coinbase to properly integrate Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.
The site began accepting Bitcoin as a payment for the perk since When the news about the ban reached the first page of Bitcoin Subreddit, a Reddit administrator responded to the decision to eliminate the currency, stating that they had problems with the Coinbase payment platform, which led to the complete disablement of the currency.
Payment requests would end up getting stuck in the network which developed into pick-and-choose transactions for miners and higher fees which meant for some smaller transactions the cost was not worth the transaction.
Reddit is the largest web community in which cryptocurrency enthusiasts meet and discuss technology. Reddit was one of the earliest gathering spots for Bitcoin enthusiasts, dating back to when a Bitcoin traded for just a few pennies. The Bitcoin subreddit community hassubscribers, and the subreddit of cryptocurrencies has more thansubscribers.
The banning seemed odd, given the fact that Reddit is a platform for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and given its nature as an anonymous open-discourse forum. Coinbase had made changes to Coinbase Commerce which allowed merchants to accept Bitcoin Payment, a the change required merchants to make a significant upgrade, and Reddit chose not to make the upgrade at the time, disabling Bitcoin as a payment method.
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