The IRS’s criminal division identified “dozens” of potential cryptocurrency tax evaders or cybercriminals after a meeting this week with tax authorities from four other countries. Bloomberg reports: Officials from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and the Netherlands — known as the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement — shared data, tools and tax enforcement strategies to find new leads in a…
Tag: crypto
Share of Cryptocurrency Jobs Grew 1,457% In 4 Years
The share of cryptocurrency jobs per million has risen 1,457% over the past four years, according to a study by job site Indeed.com. VentureBeat reports: Indeed analyzed millions of job postings on Indeed.com to unpack how Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain trends have affected the job market. Searches for Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency roles are going down — yet employer demand has…
Facebook Crypto Boss: ‘I Don’t Think of Bitcoin as a Currency’
David Marcus, the head of Facebook’s cryptocurrency projects, says that Bitcoin is digital gold, but it’s not a good currency for transactions. From a report: “I don’t think of Bitcoin as a currency. It’s actually not a great medium of exchange because of its volatility,” Marcus said speaking at the New York Times DealBook Conference in New York. “I see it…
A Widespread BlueKeep ‘Exploit’ Is Targetting Unpatched Windows 7/XP Computers
An anonymous reader quotes Forbes:
When Microsoft issued the first patch in years for Windows XP in May 2019, you knew that something big was brewing. That something was a wormable Windows vulnerability that security experts warned could have a similar impact as the WannaCry worm from 2017. The BlueKeep vulnerability exists in unpatched versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows…
WAV Audio Files Are Now Being Used To Hide Malicious Code
JustAnotherOldGuy quotes ZDNet: Two reports published in the last few months show that malware operators are experimenting with using WAV audio files to hide malicious code. The first of these new malware campaigns abusing WAV files was reported back in June by Symantec security researchers who said they spotted a Russian cyber-espionage group known as Waterbug (or Turla) using WAV files…
The World’s Most-Used Cryptocurrency Isn’t Bitcoin
What’s the world’s most widely used cryptocurrency? If you think it’s Bitcoin, which accounts for about 70% of all the digital-asset world’s market value, you’re probably wrong. From a report: While concrete figures on trading volumes are hard to come by in this often murky corner of finance, data from CoinMarketCap.com show that the token with the highest daily and monthly…
Dutch Police Take Down Hornets’ Nest of DDoS Botnets
Dutch police have taken down this week a bulletproof hosting provider that has sheltered tens of IoT botnets that have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of DDoS attacks around the world, ZDNet reports. From the report: Servers were seized, and two men were arrested yesterday at the offices of KV Solutions BV (KV hereinafter), a so-called bulletproof hosting provider, a…
Crypto-mining Malware Saw New Life Over the Summer as Monero Value Tripled
Malware that mines cryptocurrency made a comeback over the summer, with an increased number of campaigns being discovered and documented by cyber-security firms. From a report: The primary reason for this sudden resurgence is the general revival of the cryptocurrency market, which saw trading prices recover after a spectacular crash in late 2018. Monero, the cryptocurrency of choice of most crypto-mining…
Does Quantum Cryptography Need a Reboot?
“Despite decades of research, there’s no viable roadmap for how to scale quantum cryptography to secure real-world data and communications for the masses,” according to IEEE Spectrum. Wave723 shares their report: A handful of companies now operate or pay for access to networks secured using quantum cryptography in the United States, China, Austria, and Japan. According to a recent industry report,…
Celo Launches Decentralized Open Source Financial Services Prototype
Forbes notes that other financial transaction platforms hope to benefit from Facebook’s struggles in launching its Libra cryptocurrency — including Celo. The key value proposition of the assets running on top of the [Celo] platform is that they are immune to the wide swings in volatility that have plagued leading crypto assets in recent years. Many are designed to mirror the…