Tag Archive for: Funds

Election officials want more funds to combat midterm election cyber threats

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Below: This week’s web attacks in Ukraine were the largest the nation has ever faced, and another cyber-focused lawmaker is retiring from Congress. 

Election officials are in a money crunch

Election officials are facing a barrage of cybersecurity threats as the midterms approach.

But chances are slim that Congress will pitch in any money to help out.

Their wish list includes: 

  • More cyber testing for election office computer networks.
  • Cyber training for election workers and volunteers.
  • Better physical security to ensure outsiders and rogue staffers can’t monkey with election machines so they’re unsafe to use.

That’s on top of money they need for a suite of non-cyber challenges, including replacing staff who’ve quit amid a wave of death threats against election workers, inspired by former president Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud, as Mike DeBonis and Amy Gardner report.

The money crunch is a common dilemma for election officials who’ve faced one crisis after another in recent years, including Russian interference in the 2016 contest, the coronavirus pandemic and disinformation campaigns about elections from foreign and domestic sources. 

Congress has kicked in to help — including about $800 million for election security between 2016 and 2020 along with another $400 million to run safe elections during the coronavirus pandemic. But that’s only a fraction of what officials have said is necessary to make elections as secure as possible. 

“When election officials don’t have sufficient funds to run elections, they have to make tough choices and the truth is those choices can adversely impact the accessibility and security of elections,” David Levine, an election integrity fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, told me.

Election funding proposals have ranged from $20 billion sought by Democratic election officials to a more modest request for $5 billion in the next budget cycle. 

The Bipartisan Policy Center has suggested spending about $400 million annually on elections and focusing on ideas favored by Republicans and Democrats. 

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Poly Network Gets Back The Stolen Funds In The Bigger Cryptocurrency Hack Ever

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Yesterday we looked into the biggest cryptocurrency hack that ever happened, today we talk about how the attackers decided to give back the money they have stolen during it.

Yes, you heard it right! The cybercriminals behind the Chinese Internet protocol Poly Network attack who have stolen approximately $600 million worth of cryptocurrency assets began to return it, as shared by the organization on Twitter.

So far, the hacker has reimbursed $256 million Binance Smart Chain (BSC) tokens, $3.3 million in Ethereum tokens, and $1 million in USD Coin (USDC) on the Polygon network, but decided to keep the rest of it for the negotiations with the cross-chain DeFi protocol.

In order to have back in its account all the assets that have been stolen, Poly still needs to receive the difference of $269 million on Ethereum and $84 million on Polygon.

Why Did the Attackers Return the Money to Poly Network?

It’s not the first time the hackers said they are willing to return the stolen assets, which made many believe that the attack may have been meant to show the Chinese company it needs better protection against cybercriminals, just like a white-hat hacker would do.

A white-hat hacker (a good hacker) is a computer security expert whose job is to breach secured networks in order to test their security.

On the other side, chief scientist at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic Tom Robinson thinks that giving back the stolen cryptocurrency shows that even if you can steal it, laundering and converting them might be an inconvenience “due to the transparency of the blockchain.”

It could also be the blockchain security company SlowMist announcement that they have identified the cybercriminal’s ID, email address, IP information, and device fingerprint.

The firm also stated that the hacker’s resources were initially in monero (XMR), but were swapped for BNB, ETH and MATIC, and other tokens that were used to sponsor the cyberattack.

Or maybe it was Poly Network’s message?

Poly Network cryptocurrency hack

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In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session the attackers declared they have attacked the Poly Network platform for fun and because…

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Hacker behind biggest cryptocurrency heist ever returns stolen funds

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Hacker behind $600M cryptocurrency heist returning stolen funds

The threat actor who hacked Poly Network’s cross-chain interoperability protocol yesterday to steal over $600 million worth of cryptocurrency assets is now returning the stolen funds.

AAs the Chinese decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Poly Network shared two hours ago, the hacker has already returned almost $260 million worth of stolen cryptocurrency.

In total, the attacker has transferred back $256 million Binance Smart Chain (BSC) tokens, $3.3 million in Ethereum tokens, and $1 million in USD Coin (USDC) on the Polygon network.

To send back all the stolen funds, the hacker still has to return another $269 million on Ethereum and $84 million on Polygon.

Motives behind returning the stolen assets unknown

The threat actor explained the motivation for the hack by embedding Q&A messages in transactions (as Elliptic Chief Scientist and Co-founder Tom Robinson found), the motives behind their decision to give back the stolen cryptocurrency are not yet known.

However, it could have been prompted by blockchain security firm SlowMist’s claims that it traced the attacker’s email address, IP address, and device fingerprint.

SlowMist also discovered that the assets used to fund the attack were Monero (XMR) exchanged to BNB, ETH, MATIC, and other tokens.

In a weird twist of events, Poly Network also urged the hacker to return the cryptocurrency stolen from “thousands of crypto community members” to avoid landing on law enforcement’s radar.

The biggest cryptocurrency hack ever

Following a preliminary investigation of the attack, Poly Network said the threat actor exploited a vulnerability between contract calls which allowed them to gain ownership of funds and transfer them to attacker-controlled wallets:

“This attack is mainly because the keeper of the EthCrossChainData contract can be modified by the EthCrossChainManager contract, and the verifyHeaderAndExecuteTx function of the EthCrossChainManager contract can execute the data passed in by the user through the _executeCrossChainTx function,” SlowMist further explained.

“Therefore, the attacker uses this function to pass in carefully constructed data to…

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Retail investors on the hunt for bargains in China-focused funds

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Exchange traded funds updates

Retail investors are scooping up funds that track Chinese stocks after sharp falls in recent weeks, marking a contrast to institutions that have remained more cautious as Beijing cracks down on key sectors.

A US listed exchange traded fund, which holds big names such as Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and Meituan, has attracted more than $2bn of new money since the start of July, CFRA data show. The $5.3bn KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF has garnered record daily inflows from retail traders at a time when many institutional investors have backed away from sectors that are deemed vulnerable to tougher scrutiny from Chinese authorities.

The strong inflows come after a harrowing few weeks for Chinese stocks traded in international financial centres such as Hong Kong and New York. A crackdown on the country’s education sector sparked a crash in a trio of Wall Street listed companies in that industry, while a Nasdaq index of big Chinese tech companies lost more than a fifth of its value last month. The KraneShares fund has tumbled by a third so far in 2021.

“Investors tend to expect elevated risk associated with emerging markets and while Chinese stocks have been hit hard, there is view that this is a buying opportunity for some funds that are trading at cheap valuations,” said Todd Rosenbluth, head of mutual fund and ETF strategy at CFRA.

Other ETFs that track Chinese shares have also hoovered up new cash in recent weeks despite the broad market being hit hard by Beijing’s harsher regulatory stance. The iShares China large cap ETF, for example, has attracted inflows of $467m in recent days, according to ETF.com.

A benchmark tracking Chinese internet stocks listed internationally is trading at its lowest price-to-earnings ratio in five years, and investors probably recalled “significant” sell-offs in the past were followed by periods of outperformance, Brendan Ahern, KraneShares investment chief told clients in a webinar this week. To see more sustained inflows, investors needed “clarity” and an “end…

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