Hackers Steal $19 Million From Bithumb Cryptocurrency Exchange

Hackers yesterday stole nearly $19 million worth of cryptocurrency from Bithumb, the South Korea-based popular cryptocurrency exchange admitted today.

According to Primitive Ventures' Dovey Wan, who first broke the information on social media, hackers managed to compromise a number of Bithumb's hot EOS and XRP wallets and transferred around 3 million EOS (~ $13 million) and 20 million XRP (~ $6 million) to his newly-created accounts.

The hacker then distributedly transferred the stolen digital assets to his different accounts created on other cryptocurrency exchanges, including Huobi, HitBTC, WB, and EXmo, via ChangeNow, a non-custodial crypto swap platform does not require KYC/account.

Scammers stole £1.2bn from British bank customers in 2018

Year on year figure up by 25%, and firms must reimburse victims, says UK Finance

Scammers stole £1.2bn from UK bank customers in 2018, according to official data, with a near-500% leap in counterfeit cheque fraud, indicating some criminals are resorting to old-school techniques.

The headline fraud figure is up almost a quarter on 2017, when the total was £968m. There was a 50% leap, to £354m, in the amount lost to scams in which people are duped into authorising a payment to an account.

Why shame prevents people from reporting cybercrime

Embarrassment has become an obstacle in the Halifax Regional Police force's efforts to understand how much cybercrime occurs in the municipality. 

People are frequently so ashamed of getting duped online that they don't come forward and report the crime to police, said Staff Sgt. Kevin Smith.

That means cybercrime is woefully under-reported, making it difficult for police to know what is happening online and to identify culprits.

Facebook Squares Up to Law Enforcers with New Privacy Focus

Mark Zuckerberg has detailed his vision for the future of Facebook: a “privacy-focused” messaging and social platform which will see the News Feed marginalized as users switch to encrypted WhatsApp and Messenger communications.

The new privacy-centric platform he hopes to build over the course of the next few years will be focused around several key principles: private interactions; end-to-end encryption; “reducing permanence”; safety; interoperability; and secure data storage.

“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about,” said Zuckerberg in a lengthy post.

IBM’S WATSON NOW FIGHTS CYBERCRIME IN THE REAL WORLD

YOU MAY KNOW Watson as IBM's Jeopardy-winning, cookbook-writing, dress-designing, weather-predicting supercomputer-of-all trades. Now it's embarking on its biggest challenge yet: Preventing cybercrime in finance, healthcare, and other fields.

Starting today, 40 organizations will rely upon the clever computers cognitive power to help spot cybercrime. The Watson for Cybersecurity beta program helps IBM too, because Watson's real-world experience will help it hone its skills and work within specific industries. After all, the threats that keep security experts at Sun Life Financial up at night differ from those that spook the cybersleuths at University of New Brunswick.