TR Notes#01: DeFi under fire, ChatGPT assisted attacks and more. (15 Jan 2023)
DeFi projects were heavily targeted in 2022, ChatGPT assisted attacks may rise, and researchers claimed they can break RSA 2048 encryption using quantum computing!
Cryptospace Spotlight
8 Jan - In a recent report by Slowmist, there were 303 blockchain-related security incidents in 2022, resulting in losses of up to $3.777 billion.[more]
9 Jan - DeFi-type projects received the highest number of attacks in 2022. A new Web3 security report by Beosin revealed that 113 out of 167 major security exploits were DeFi projects. In addition, global total-value-locked (TVL) shrank significantly in 2022, ending the year with TVL down approximately 80% from its peak at the beginning of the year. [more] [more-Beosin-report/pdf]
10 Jan - FairyProofTech noted that BRA tokens on BNB Chain were exploited due to the vulnerability that enable the attacker to "mint" unlimited BRA tokens. [more]
13 Jan - MetaMask warned the crypto community about a new type of scam technique - address poisoning - where fraudsters using to take advantage of “user carelessness”. With the address poisoning technique, cybercriminals track a user’s transactions and generate a “vanity” wallet address that contains similar characters to an actual recipient’s address in the transaction history.[more]
Nomad exploit wallet address transfers $1.5M to Tornado Cash. The wallet address related to the $190 million hack transferred more than 1200 Ether to the sanctioned cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash. [more]
Solana Foundation's RPC endpoints were offline because of a bug in the Validator client’s test release 1.14. It urged those operating on the node to change over to 1.13 [more]
Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is exploring de-risking policies for central banks, with a ban on crypto activity one potential option. [more]
Techwatch
Cybersecurity experts warn that ChatGPT and similar AI models could lower the bar for hackers to write malicious code to target existing or newly discovered vulnerabilities. In addition, it would help non-English speakers craft markedly better phishing emails.[more]
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), dual-engine decision intelligence, cloud computing and security are expected to be the top technology trends for 2023, according to Alibaba Damo Academy. [more]
“In the next three years, we will see business models emerging and ecosystems maturing as generative AI becomes widely marketised,” the Damo report said. “Generative AI models will be more interactive, secure and intelligent, assisting human beings to complete various creative work.”
François Chollet, an influential deep learning researcher at Google, said that “the current climate in AI has so many parallels to 2021 web3 it's making me uncomfortable”. He pointed out the eerily similar fashion to the blockchain bubble, hype — as opposed to firm data and proven results — is in the industry driving seat. VCs may well be taking a much bigger risk than they think they are, both fueling and feeding off of a hype cycle of half-baked products, rather than making measured calls about a situationally promising, though still quite limited, burgeoning market. [more]
Chinese researchers claim they can break RSA 2048 encryption using quantum computing. However, other security experts have dismissed the claim. [more]