Etherscan Block-Explorer Hit by ‘Harmless’ Hack

Visitors to the Etherscan.io website were panicking on Monday when faced with a pop-up indicating that the site had been hacked. The popular Ethereum blockchain-explorer quickly fixed the breach and no data was compromised — this time.

“1337”

The hacker was apparently able to implement the attack via code input into the comments section of the site.

This security vulnerability allowed the hacker to display a pop-up window to site-visitors bearing the message “1337” — hacking shorthand dating from the 1980s indicating that the attacker is an ‘elite’ or ‘leet’ hacker.

@etherscan got hacked? 🤔 does anyone have information about this „message“? #crypto #etherscan #ethereum #hack pic.twitter.com/uiU1hVXscF

— Mr. z0rn (@Mr_z0rn) July 23, 2018

Etherscan users took to Twitter for more information on the hack and to warn others.

The comments section of the site was disabled, and a patch was developed and tested to address the issue.

On this occasion, it seems that the pop-up was the only intended consequence of the breach.

Benign

Hacks are a bit like cancer; the very word has the ability to strike fear into those that hear it. In reality, however, both can range in danger-level from completely benign to highly malicious. Despite this, no hack is ever particularly good news.

Etherscan is one of the most popular block-explorers for the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to view, search, and understand the data on the public ledger. It does not offer a digital-wallet service, so user funds were never directly in jeopardy — but the hack could certainly have had far greater repercussions than it did.

Potential

Being able to execute code on the site gave the attacker the potential to manipulate the site as he or she saw fit. This could include embedding keyloggers or other malware or objectionable material. “It’s really down to your imagination at this point,” security researcher Scott Helme told Motherboard.

One risk particular to a site like this would be altering price graphs to make the blockchain look a certain way. This could trigger a buy/sell reaction, potentially causing a wider impact across the whole market.

Luckily, this hack has identified the security vulnerability, which can no longer be exploited for more nefarious purposes.

What do you think about the harmless Etherscan hack? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter.

Published at Wed, 25 Jul 2018 19:00:10 +0000

Altcoin News

October 22, 2017

Mastercard Blockchain Now Open for Payment Processing

Mastercard has opened up their own blockchain to allow payment transactions to be carried out between selected banks and merchants, but this process uses fiat currency and not bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

Quite a few companies have taken a keen interest in what blockchain technology has to offer, and one of these corporate entities is Mastercard, the massive credit card provider. Mastercard has spent the last few years developing its own blockchain, and now the Mastercard blockchain has been opened up as an alternative method of paying for goods and services. The major difference found in the Mastercard blockchain is that it does not use its own cryptocurrency. Instead, it uses real world money.

Mastercard Blockchain Open for Business

The Mastercard blockchain is now open for specific banks and retailers to use as a payment processing system. So far, participation in this blockchain is by invitation only. The last week has been a busy one for Fortune 500 companies and blockchain technology. IMB opened up their own blockchain earlier in the week. Probably the most intriguing aspect of the Mastercard blockchain is that it does not use its own cryptocurrency, which is something that even the IBM blockchain does.

Justin Pinkham, a senior vice president at Mastercard Labs, says:

We are not using a cryptocurrency, and we are not introducing a new cryptocurrency, because that introduces other challenges—regulatory, legal challenges. If you do a payment, then what we can do is move those funds in the way that we do today in fiat currency.

Why the Mastercard Blockchain Could be Very Successful

Some people may look at the Mastercard blockchain and shrug, but there are some factors in why it could be very successful. The first such reason is that Mastercard is lord and master of a vast financial empire, so to speak. It has a settlement network that counts 22,000 banks and financial institutions from all over the world. Few other entities have such a global reach. Another important factor is that the Mastercard blockchain only uses fiat currency, which reduces costs as there’s no need to convert one form of cryptocurrency into another and then, eventually, cash.

This reduction in cost is also amplified by reducing fees for cross-border payments. Normally, a payment that crosses national borders would have to pass through different sovereign banks, racking up fees with each step. The Mastercard blockchain would remove those steps entirely, thus making the payment less expensive and probably faster. Eventually, Mastercard’s blockchain could be used for other items, such as luxury goods to provide “proof of provenance.”

Overall, this is an interesting development. Could the lack of a cryptocurrency tie-in fire a shot across the bow of other blockchains? One also wonders how the energy use for a single transaction on the Mastercard blockchain compares to current credit card transactions and bitcoin. A Dutch bank recently reported that the average energy cost for a bitcoin transaction was 200kWh, and the cost for an Ethereum transaction was 37kWh. By comparison, a credit card transaction only incurred an energy cost of 0.01kWh.

Do you think the Mastercard blockchain will have a major impact? Does the fact that it does not use a cryptocurrency have long-lasting ramifications? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Pixabay, and Flickr.

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