Author: David Canellis

Popular crypto wallet My Ether Wallet (MEW) has issued some advice on “How Not to get Scammed & Phished”

As we reported yesterday, a DNS attack on the MEW website led to wallets automatically withdrawn to an address which later on moved the funds to different location.

According to multiple reports, the stolen tokens were in the equivalent of at least $150,000 USD.

Below we have included some steps, which you should always consider when creating on accessing your wallet, as advised by MEW.

1 – Makes sure you install EtherAddressLookup or MetaMask. Both addons work well on Chrome Browser and will initiate warnings if the site is not secure for you to use.

2 — If you receive a link to a token sale in your inbox or social media for MEW, Etherdelta, Shapeshift or other cryptocurrency services, do not open it. Such links could lead you to phishing pages that appear identical to the ones you expect to visit. Instead, do your own research on Google and use one of the top results that is not a sponsored/ad page.

3 — Private keys are called “private” for a reason. When asked to enter it for an airdrop be very suspicious. There is no reason for websites to ask for your private keys in order to send you tokens.

4 — Pay attention to the URL of the website you are visiting. There are numerous phishing techniques, some include hard-to-see symbols and misspelt names. For example, a malicious website address may use “Shapshift” as their url to confuse users looking for the Shapeshift service.

5 — If you are dealing with a token or exchange you are not familiar with, a small amount of research on Google and/or Twitter could relieve a large amount of regret later.

6 — Make sure you visit Twitter to double verify the authenticity of the token and/or website. In the case of visiting a verified Twitter page, make sure the handle is correct. There have been attempts by fraudsters to mislead users by purchasing verified accounts and changing the display name to trick you to click on a phishing link.

7 — Etherscan.io is the best way to check an address before you make a transfer. Check the comments left by the public and make sure the people you are about to send money to are legitimate.

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Reports are coming from across the globe that claim that bad actors have taken control of the DNS registry of popular Ethereum blockchain interface and ad-hoc ERC-20 wallet MyEtherWallet (MEW) and is siphoning tokens.

Originally brought to light in a reddit post, an affected user described being connected to the MyEtherWallet website through an uncertified certificate. After proceeding to login despite security warnings, the user reported having all of the ETH tokens stored in their wallet removed just seconds after, transferred to this wallet address.

DNS servers are the protocol responsible for translating domain names such as myetherwallet.com into IP addresses.

In this instance, it appears that the MyEtherWallet domain on Google’s Public DNS listing has been replaced with an IP address based in Russia that hosts a malicious version of MyEtherWallet, designed for the phishing of users private keys.

As this story is developing and ongoing, CryptoCoinSpy recommends to avoid using MyEtherWallet until the problem is resolved.

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A developer of software and hardware made specifically for the cryptocurrency market, Virtual Crypto Technologies, has unveiled its first market-ready gadget: the NetoBit Cash. It is a proprietary tablet device aimed at giving merchants, businesses, distributors and their customers peace of mind by ensuring security all relevant transactional data.

The hardware will even support protection against exchange rate volatility and looks to eliminate instances of fraud by insuring the transactions of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies up to the value of US$3,000.

Software launched with the NetoBit will support the sale, purchase and conversions of various cryptocurrencies at any supported point-of-sale, including e-commerce websites, ATMs, other tablets, mobile devices and PCs.

CEO and co-founder of Virtual Crypto commented on the launch, saying:

We established Virtual Crypto to increase the practicality of cryptocurrency across global markets, and the NetoBit series is our first broad-based solution for this billion-dollar industry. Our proprietary blockchain products and services make cryptocurrencies accessible to businesses and users in every industry, and turn dormant assets sitting in users’ digital wallets into funds that function like cash,”

Marketed as a complete solution for small to mid-sized businesses such as restaurants, cafes, shops, they even have eyes on incorporating larger enterprises such as airlines, government agencies and broader payment gateways.

The platform seeks to eliminate market volatility through an algorithm that surveys the entire cryptocurrency network for the best deal at any one time of conversion across many different exchanges.

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SophiaTX’s parent company, Switzerland’s Venaco Group, has secured a deal with South East Asia’s leading outsourcing accountancy services organization, Cheng & Co.

The strategic partnership will see the integration of the SophiaTX proprietary enterprise fintech platform into applications already widely used by the firm in their business-to-business and information technology projects. It will also see both Venaco and Cheng & Co co-operate further through the opening of two-way business and development advisory channels.

This may just be the break that the upstart blockchain has been waiting for: the SophiaTX platform and marketplace has been specifically tailored to extend those traditional applications used by large financial establishments, namely Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Planning suites.

Chief Executive Officer of Cheng & Co., Tom Wong, had this to say of what the deal means for their growth:

We have found a great partner in Venaco Group and we believe that by integrating our solutions with its innovative technology, we can create an even more compelling end-to-end value proposition for our clients.”

Cheng & Co is one of the largest home-grown accountancy firms in Malaysia, rapidly expanding worldwide through the acquisition of over twenty smaller firms over the last two decades. Considering such growth, other global operations could be watching the adoption of SophiaTX’s blockchain-based enterprise solution closely with an eye to incorporate the technology themselves as a means of competing.

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Decentralised storage platform, Sia has successfully completed their Tokenized Securities Offering (TSO) selling 231 Siafunds at a price of $7,500 USD each.

The reported sum, taking into account presale agreements with three investors prior to the TSO, is reported to be around $1.5M USD.

The team announced in a Medium post that the funds will be immediately put in use for the expansion of the project’s development team. Furthermore, the post confirms that the project has already hired a new core dev in the face of Matt Savey and plans to announce two new team members in the near future.

Sia has two digital assets, the Siacoin — token used to rent storage on the Sia network and Siafund — a digital asset that entitled the holder to a portion of the Siacoins exchanged in every instance in which a file contract is created on the network.

The project launched their fully functioning decentralized storage platform in 2015 and has since been gradually making progress in their quest to challenge industry giants such as Amazon, Google and Dropbox.

In addition to the successful TSO, the Sia team has also confirmed that more information on their 2018 roadmap will be released by the end of the week. You can keep up with the latest from Sia via their Twitter or Medium pages.

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