THE DARK WEB

THE DARK WEB

Only few days ago, smart contract coding company Parity has issued a security alert, warning of a vulnerability in version 1.5 or later of its wallet software.

So far, 150,000 ethers, worth $30 million, have been reported by the company as stolen, data confirmed by Etherscan.io. As reported by the startup, the issue is the result of a bug in a specific multi-signature contract known as wallet.sol. Data suggests the issue was mitigated, however, as 377,000 ethers that were potentially vulnerable to the issue were recovered by white hat hackers.

Parity ranked the severity of the bug as "critical" in its public remarks, urging "any user with funds in a multi-sig wallet" move their funds to a secure address.

According to Parity founder and CTO Gavin Wood, at least three ether addresses have been compromised as a result of the bug.

We hear about stories as above almost often now. We or companies are not willing to own up to own lackluster security practices. In most cases its months before anyone ever reported that their records or money were stolen. There are even site you can go to if you want to change your identity, buy a fake ID or fake passports. 

The United Nations estimates that 80 percent of it is from highly organized and ultra-sophisticated criminal gangs representing one of the largest illegal economies in the world, topping out at half a trillion dollars. This figure is larger than the GDP of 160 nations, including Ireland, Finland, Denmark and Portugal, to name a few.

So where is all of this coming from?

The Dark Web

The dark web is a term used to describe the anonymous underbelly of the internet, where thieves can operate with anonymity and without detection. Here they peddle their attack software and share information on new attack techniques. You can buy everything, from a base-level attack to a much more advanced version. In fact, in many cases, you even see gold, silver and bronze levels of service. You can check references. You can even buy attacks that come with a money-back guarantee. 

They operate like highly regimented, legitimate businesses working Monday through Friday. They take the weekends off. How do we know this? We know this by looking at the repeated spikes of malware on a Friday afternoon. The bad guys, after a long weekend, come back to the office to see how well things went.

How do these criminals operate? They operate with anonymity and outside the reach of the law. We hate this lot of people, but we have to observe the entrepreneurial nature of their endeavors if we are to fight them. The approach needs to be centered on the idea that we need to change the economics for the guys operating in “The Dark Web”.

We need to be open and collaborate in knowing who is being attack and how the attack is spreading. Governments and private institutions should play a more aggressive role to respond openly and quickly. This is a collective effort to stop the attack and trace the attack tracks. 

So this tells us is that the real obstacle is not ability, and it's not circumstances. It's something much simpler. It’s about making big changes involving taking big risks, and taking big risks is scary. But that doesn't mean we can't demand courage from our part. I mean, since we are all wired-up and given the state of the world today, there's really no other option but to face head-on. 

I realize, of course, that all attacks are unique. You can't simply take what worked in one, port it to another and expect it to work there too. Nor do specific solutions work for all and forever. You've got to adapt them as circumstances change.