Andre Bustamante, former CIA intelligence officer, offered Blockchain as a potent threat for the national security. He described his views focusing on hacking in subreddit thread on Dec. Twenty-two in expectancy to have reaction from the interested people. In a series of questions and responses in subreddit he clearly disclosed his adverse ideas about Blockchain when he introduced it as a very effective and fruitful teaching plan which results in people learning espionage tactics.
The interesting point achieved through a simple assessment of the answers coming from redditors and this somehow pessimistic veteran’s was that Blockchain thread for the national security equaled very critical international challenges like Iran, North Korea, or Climate change. It is on you to judge if it is an extremist approach.
His views intrigued many different redditors’ ideas reflecting on his statement regarding Blockchain ranging from assuming it as the interest to keep transactions anonymous and untraceable to a national security threat born by technology.
What might be a stimulus for Mr. Bustamante to be hard in his idea is a similar geopolitical crisis by Blockchain manipulation referring to a charge about seven Russian officers by the U.S Department of Justice whose main crime was doing a global crypto-based hacking and disinformation in October, and a case of computer networks hacking about Democratic Party by twelve individuals from two units of the GRU.
Other than these two, the most recent accident reported about cryptocurrency unsafe attack was about Bancor, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, having been hacked announced on a Twitter post. It caused total inactivity for a transitional period of time since it needed maintenance and accounts freezing. In spite of this unpredicted problem, there was not any threat for the wallets thanks to on-time measurements on the part of Bancor exchange to control the condition. Bancor, itself, started to give the holders an elaborated report specifying the subject to ensure them about sufficient safety and riskless future activities.
The report published on Cointelegraph includes the details of two cryptocurrencies influenced, one Ethereum (ETH) with a total amount of $25000 stolen and the other Pundi X (NPXS) with the value reaching $300000; however, it is not the end of the story and the hackers caused about $12 million loss to the exchange. Fortunately, it tries to resolve the problem by tracing all technologically available to find the primary culprit.
The tracing process was somehow successful since according to Konstantin Gladych, Chagelly CEO, some of those lost tokens were exchanged in Changelly. As it is usually about many other companies with facilities of immediate cryptocurrency conversion. The criminals may exchange what they have stolen part by part in such companies to make the tracking procedure harder and more time-consuming.
It was made possible due to the apposite and wise operations on the part of the exchange to freeze the tokens. If there had been any loss in the holders’ account, the problem surely would have gotten worse.
It was not the first occurrence of the breach in the field of cryptocurrency and exchange; in case of increasing the number of such events, these companies should wait for more distrust from the holders and fewer people intending to invest on this decentralized system despite all the benefits it boasts about.
www.counos.io 