Provide two separate Comments on peer articles should be between 100-150 words. I need it to sound more like a response to what my peers wrote about the article. It should not sound like I’m doing a article review.
Peer article- one
Poly Network Hacked to the Tune of $600M+
My first “article” of the semester is actually a collection of articles and events that have taken place over the past few weeks. I think this is the perfect event to kickstart a semester of cybercrime: The Poly Network, a DeFi project, suffered an attack in early August 2021 that resulted in the theft of more than $600M, which was comprised of multiple cryptocurrency tokens and fiat currency. It appears that the attacker(s) exploited a vulnerability in the way that Poly used digital contracts to move assets between blockchains.
Oddly enough, by the time I am posting this Article Blog, the attacker(s) have returned all the $600m+ that was stolen. There are some references that the attacker(s) had no interest in money, instead just wanted to prove that it could be done.
I think this article is great for our class for three reasons:
1) This represents one of the largest successful thefts of funds to date. I know that state-nexus threat actors have tried large monetary heists before, but this one is a hallmark case for cybercrime. Or is it?
2) The other interesting factor, perhaps worth it for us to discuss, is that the funds have been returned in full. Poly Network even offered the attacker(s) a job and/or a bug bounty. So, at what point do we determine this to be cybercrime? How do we classify this event if, at the end of it all, there was no damage and the company refuses to press charges?
3) We cannot willingly study cybercrime but refuse to include the impact of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are unique aspects of cybercrime. They are a medium for exchanging payments and illicit funds, however they themselves are targets (as we saw in this case). I think as we learn more and more about this space, it will be interesting to see how cryptocurrency tokens and exchanges impact legislation on cybercrime. I hope to hear timely feedback from others on this!
https://www.reuters.com/technology/how-hackers-stole-613-million-crypto-tokens-poly-network-2021-08-12/
https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/121005/cyber-crime/poly-network-cross-chain-hack.html
https://gizmodo.com/all-610-million-stolen-in-historic-crypto-heist-has-be-1847540590
https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2021/poly-network-hackers-return-half-of-stolen-613m/
Peer article- two
On the topic of ransomware and cybercrime, Bangkok Airways suffered a cyber-attack that resulted in the compromise of passengers’ PII. A tweet from DarkTracer posted an announcement from the LockBit ransomware gang that stated they had 200+GB of data from the airline, and that “all available data will be published.” Interestingly, there have been other reports that the size of the data is 103GB, but let us just say its a lot of passenger data! The release of data came at the end of a five-day ransom payment time limit, and I have to assume that the airline refused to pay. It does mention that authories were notified, but similar to U.S.-based ransomware cases, arrests chances are very unlikely. I think the PII data is the most concerning here, as it provides anyone with access to the data the chance to see passenger details, personal information, etc. In the wrong hands, that can be very damaging information.
The other significant element in this story is the LockBit ransomware gang. They’ve been known to go after governments and large businesses, who likely cannot deal with the data loss or have the funds to pay the ransom. I don’t think we have seen the end of this group, and I’d expect more ransoms from them in the future.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bangkok-airlines-attackers-stole/
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/31/bangkok_airways_hit_by_lockbit/
