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GMB Snap allows you and your clients to Rank higher in Google Maps, drive traffic, boost sales and profits. You can easily charge $1500/ client for helping them boost their rankings with almost zero work. The software does all for you. It’s a lucrative niche and marketers are looking out for such valuable service especially post pandemic…Read more details here:
With a massive number of cryptocurrencies exploding in the market, crypto wallet application adoption is also rising at a faster pace. With the technological revolution, hackers have also fine-tuned their hacking methods and have now grown up smarter to hack your crypto wallets.
Generally, Cryptocurrency Wallet Development Company offers multi-layer security to the crypto applications developed by them. But, still can be prone to hacking attempts.
Hackers are Making a Way into Your Crypto Wallet!
The initial 7 months of 2022 witnessed $1.9 billion worth of crypto coins being stolen which accounts for 60% more compared to last year. When a user downloads a trojan application on the device, it steals $600,000 worth of Bitcoins from your Crypto Wallet Application. This Android trojan is called Sharkbot which initiates money transactions from your crypto wallets bypassing the security systems. This is just one type of trojan, there are multiple trojans the hackers can attack your Crypto Wallet Application with.
Also, hackers normally try to exploit the interfaces that connect the crypto wallet applications to the backend service that supports them.
Security Hacks You Need to Ponder on for Defending your Crypto Wallets!
Cold Wallet to be Your Savior!
The best way to prevent cryptocurrency loss is to store your coins in a cold wallet or hardware wallet. These wallets store your funds offline, thus preventing hackers from accessing your cryptocurrencies online or through traditional methods.
A cold crypto wallet is much like a USB device, holding a private key that is used to access your cryptocurrencies. Storing your private key online will result in hackers easily accessing it and your account will be compromised. This will lead you to lose all your crypto investment. So, it is advisable to store your private key offline.Exchange platform that Keeps Hackers Away!
Before you choose an exchange platform, make sure you carry out your research thoroughly on the security of the crypto exchange platform. Check online if the crypto exchange platform you are choosing has been compromised in the past or if any wallet on the exchange platform has been hacked. If the crypto exchange platform has been hacked, it depicts poor security protocols, where your crypto wallet or investment in it might be at risk.
Check if the crypto exchange platform is using multi-factor authentication or TLS/ SSL encryption to secure your wallet. In the last, verify if they have any safety measures in place like the transaction limits and notifications on every transfer or even the option to freeze the account and mitigate the damages.If you are looking for a crypto exchange development, here it is! RWaltz Software, Your trusted partner to launch your crypto exchange platform.
Multi-Factor Authentication to Authenticate Your Access!
Multi-Factor Authentication offers a layered defense mechanism by authenticating your wallet with independent credentials like passwords, security tokens, and/ or biometrics. To set up multi-factor authentication, you can select either SMS or a 2FA application push notification.
Be Aware of Phishing Attacks!
Phishing attackers generally target users by posing as legitimate entities to gain access to your sensitive information. Avoid falling prey to these phishing attacks by making sure you log into the correct crypto exchange platform. Don’t click on the link received over emails, chats, or even text messages.
Save the exchange link or add it to your favorites. Lastly, always verify the details twice before you make crypto transactions.
Don’t forget to Change Your Passwords Regularly!
It is a cyber law, that how much ever tricky password you set, one day it will be compromised. So, the best way to prevent this theft is to set a complex password, store it safely and change it regularly. Make sure you don’t reuse the password or set any personal information as a key.
Instead of saving passwords on google, use password managers. Lastly, make sure your password is updated every six months.
BitcoinVB – Highly Secure Wallet Application by the Industry Leaders!
BitcoinVB is a highly secure wallet application developed by RWaltz for ensuring the secure storing and management of bitcoins. Click here, to explore the portfolio! If you are looking for a similar wallet application, then RWaltz can be the right choice for you. We are a reliable cryptocurrency wallet development company that offers custom digital wallet app development.
Let’s Wrap Up!
Hopefully, the above article has enlightened your knowledge of digital wallet app security. If you have any queries, feel free to connect with our experts. Hurry up! Schedule a meeting now!
Wintermute, a London-based cryptocurrency firm that trades billions of dollars’ worth of digital assets daily, lost $160 million in a hack early on Tuesday. Founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy says he learned of the hack a few minutes after it took place, around 6:00 AM London time.
An hour later, he announced the theft on Twitter without saying how it happened. All told, the hacker stole about $120 million worth of Wintermute’s “stable coins” including USDC and USDT, $20 million worth of its bitcoin and ether and another $20 million worth of lesser-known cryptocurrencies.
Gaevoy explained to Forbes that, although the investigation is still ongoing, the hack likely originated with a service called Profanity, which generates “vanity addresses” for digital cryptocurrency accounts to make them easier to work with. Otherwise, crypto accounts are roughly 30-character strings of varied letters and numbers.
Last week, a blog post by another crypto firm revealed a security vulnerability with Profanity’s code. The gist of the problem: someone with enough computing power can generate all the possible keys or passwords created for a Profanity vanity address. Then they can scan the associated accounts to see how much money they hold and steal the funds.
Wintermute had been using Profanity not to create easy-to-remember names for digital accounts, but to lower its trading transaction costs, since that’s another feature of Profanity’s service, Gaevoy says. When Wintermute learned of the vulnerability last week, they took steps to technologically “blacklist” their Profanity accounts, shielding them from being liquidated.
However, due to their own “human error,” one of the 10 accounts didn’t get blacklisted, according to Gaevoy, which probably resulted in the $160 million heist. These trading accounts were part of Wintermute’s “decentralized finance” or DeFi business, where it makes rapid trades on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and Sushi Swap that aren’t controlled by a single entity.
Since the DeFi ecosystem is young, highly experimental and designed to be more openly accessible than traditional finance, it doesn’t have the same safeguards that centralized exchanges like Coinbase has. “You don’t have any circuit breakers. You don’t have any two-factor authentication to help store your keys,” Gaevoy says.
In 2021, DeFi hacks totaled $1.3 billion, according to research by security firm Certik. Analytics firm Chainalysis estimates that North Korea-linked groups stole $1 billion from DeFi protocols in the first eight months of 2022. Some tried and true security practices in crypto, such as using external hardware wallets or “multi-sig” applications that need to be digitally signed by multiple parties before a transaction is approved, can’t be used for the type of automated trading Wintermute does.
“You need to sign transactions on the fly, within seconds,” says Gaevoy. So they had to invent their own tech tools and security protocols. “Ultimately, that’s the risk we took. It was calculated.” DeFi has been a flourishing part of Wintermute’s business in prior years. “It didn’t work out this year,” he admits.
The Wintermute CEO has some leads on who the hacker might be, and he’s investigating them “both internally and with the use of external partners.” He’s hoping that the hacker will become a “white hat” who returns most of the funds, and he’s now offering a 10% bounty, or $16 million, if the hacker gives back the remaining $144 million. He tweeted that Wintermute “would prefer to resolve this in a simple way, but the window of opportunity to do so is closing fast due to the high profile of this exploit.”
Despite the new $160 million hole in its balance sheet, Gaevoy says Wintermute is on sound financial footing, with more than $350 million in equity. “We are one of the very few crypto-native proprietary trading firms that can actually take this punch,” the CEO says. For a couple hours after the hack, the company paused its OTC trading desk, where it facilitates large trades between other parties. But that has resumed to its normal operation.
I lead our fintech coverage at Forbes and also cover crypto. I edit our annual Fintech 50 and 30 Under 30 for fintech, and I’ve written frequently about leadership and corporate
As per 1inch’s findings, the private keys linked to vanity addresses could be calculated with brute force attacks. A hacker managed to steal $3.3 million worth of cryptocurrencies from several Ethereum addresses generated with the “Profanity” tool. The funds were drained even after the decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch warned users about discovering a severe vulnerability putting millions of dollars at risk.
It had previously advised users owning wallet addresses generated with the Profanity tool to transfer their assets to a different wallet.
1inch Security Report
In early 2022, 1inch contributors observed that Profanity used a random 32-bit vector to seed 256-bit private keys and suspected it could be unsafe. Upon further investigation, more suspicious activity was noted, signaling that Profanity wallets were compromised.
“The 1inch contributors checked the richest vanity addresses on popular networks and came to the conclusion that most of them were not created by the Profanity tool. But Profanity is one of the most popular tools due to its high efficiency. Sadly, that could only mean that most of the Profanity wallets were secretly hacked.”
According to 1inch, Profanity happens to be a popular and “highly efficient” tool with which users are able to create millions of addresses per second. However, the procedure used by Profanity to generate the addresses was not flawless either and was susceptible to attacks.
The security disclosure report published by 1inch last week also noted that the vulnerability may have enabled hackers to “secretly” steal millions of dollars from Profanity users’ wallets for years. The contributors are currently trying to determine all the compromised vanity addresses.
Soon after the warning, blockchain investigator ZachXBT notified the attack draining over $3 million in funds. Fortunately, his tweet helped a user save $1.2 million in crypto and NFTs from the hacker who had access to their wallet.
Profanity Devs Abandon Project
According to Tal Be’ery, ZenGo’s security lead and chief technology officer, the malicious entities could have been “sitting” on the vulnerability in an attempt to get their hands on as many private keys as possible of bug-ridden Profanity-generated vanity addresses before the vulnerability was detected. However, they cashed out after it was publicly exposed by 1inch.
Meanwhile, one of the Profanity developers, who goes by the pseudonym ‘johguse’ on Github, said that they have already “abandoned” the project a few years ago. The comment regarding the same read
“This project was abandoned by me a couple of years ago. Fundamental security issues in the generation of private keys have been brought to my attention. I strongly advise against using this tool in its current state. This repository will soon be further updated with additional information regarding this critical issue.”
When you search in “What is digital real estate” into google, you’re likely going to find guides to obtaining older versions of digital real estate such as domain names, websites, and URLs’.
And this wouldn’t be wrong, as these are still types of digital property that can be bought and sold for a profit. But, in this article, we’re going to chat more about Web3 digital real estate like the Metaverse and protocols like Parcl.
This article is mainly for beginners in this space, but feel free to check out our “What is Parcl” article if you want to learn more about our protocol. So, let’s dive into five things you need to know about digital real estate.
What is Digital Real Estate?
Let’s start with the basics; what actually is digital real estate? Digital real estate can include the ownership of a URL, website, domain name, social media account, and now virtual property in the Metaverse.
The buying and selling of which can be highly profitable if you know what you’re doing. Since we’re a Web3 protocol, we’ll focus mainly on the Metaverse and how you can gain exposure to real-world real estate through the use of digital real estate investing.
So, what can you actually do with the land in the Metaverse? The main thing you can currently do is buy and sell the virtual property, but on some larger metaverse projects like Decentraland and Sandbox, you can design your own events and play with other users.
By designing your own events and games, you can easily monetize this too. You’ll also have the ability to rent out your land to other people if buying outright is too expensive. Currently, the Metaverse is becoming more popular, with large organizations and businesses buying land to advertise their products in both the physical and digital worlds.
Yes. The Metaverse is digital real estate, but it’s not the only way to invest in this space. You can also invest in digital real estate via Parcl. Our protocol built on Solana allows the average person the ability to invest in the real estate market using synthetic assets.
So, we’ve created something called the Parcl price index, which values real estate across the US under certain parameters, which are then tied with a synthetic asset that follows this price movement. Like a derivative in traditional finance, a synthetic asset follows the underlying asset’s price, allowing you to actively trade the asset without ever owning it. Meaning that if you wanted to hedge against the effects that Covid-19 had on the Manhattan property market, you could go short on that area and profit.
Parcl allows you to trade your favorite neighborhoods on a detailed or broad level; it’s totally up to you; the same goes for the investment amount. Many people are priced out of investing in physical real estate, but thanks to Web3 technology, Parcl can offer the average person a way to invest in digital real estate to gain exposure to the physical real estate market.
If you want to learn more about how Parcl works and why we’re so passionate about leveling the real estate investing playing field, check out our Intro to Parcl article.
Of course, digital assets are a growing asset class, and that goes for NFTs and not just virtual real estate. We go into detail about the impact NFTs can have on the real estate industry here. But, in summary, the digital asset class is booming and has made plenty of people multi-millionaires over the past few years.
The NFT “Everyday’s – The First 5000 Days” sold at a Christie’s auction for $69 million. Not only that but a 500 square metered plot of Decentraland land sold for $2.43 million, making it one of the largest sales on record. So, it’s safe to say that yes, you can make a huge profit from digital asset trading. Where Can You Buy Digital Real Estate?
We’ve just determined that investing in digital assets like real estate is profitable, but where do you buy it from? Firstly, you’ve got to have your own wallet to store your land NFT and buy the assets. Check out our phantom wallet setup guide to see how it’s done.
When you’ve got your crypto wallet set up, you now need to just put in a bid for the land, this can be done straight from the metaverse project itself, such as Sandbox or Decentraland, or you could use a third-party platform such as OpenSea or MagicEden.
If you’re looking to gain exposure to physical real estate through investing in digital real estate, join our Discord or sign up to our newsletter for any updates on when our testnet launches.
Is Digital Land Going To Continue To Grow In Popularity?
Yes, and we don’t see this slowing any time soon. With people becoming more interested in gaming and the gamers of the early 2000s growing up and obtaining higher paid jobs, this disposable cash is being spent on digital assets like real estate in the Metaverse, gaming items, and avatars for their digital identities.
But, another thing to remember is that it’s not just for people who game; it’s for those that want to profit from this digital gold rush. As the world moves further into the digital era, we’ll see more people buying digital land, creating digital identities to escape the real world, and spending more on in-world items.
Not only will it be filled with gamers, but tech giants and other organizations will also begin buying up more land to advertise to millions of users. The virtual floodgates have opened, and there’s no way to close them.
How to profit from digital real estate: After buying or making your website, you need to create content on a consistent schedule to attract visitors to your website and generate traffic. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to brainstorm ideas for your blog using words that people are already searching for.
If you’re too busy to write blog posts and promote your website, hire freelancers to write content on your behalf. You can find freelancers from sites like Upwork at affordable prices. Once you’re generating enough traffic to your website, monetize that traffic to generate revenue from your website. Here are a few ways to make money from your web traffic.
Advertising: Sell ad space on your website or use an ad network like AdSense to monetize website traffic. When people click on an ad, you earn money.
Affiliate marketing: This involves promoting and selling products created by other businesses. Whenever someone buys a product through your affiliate link, you earn a commission off the sale.
Selling products: You can also create and sell your own products, like e-books, online courses and software on your website.
Sponsored content: Advertisers will often reach out to you to sponsor blog posts that promote their own brands and products. They will pay you to write about their products on your blog.
Eventually, you may start making a profitable income from your website. Then you can decide whether to sell it for a profit or to continue developing the site to use as an income stream. The choice is yours.
The good news is that you don’t have to open your checkbook or empty your bank account to invest in a website or a blog. The bad news is, unlike when you invest in stock or real estate, you can’t expect the value of your digital real estate to go up over time if you don’t do anything. You have to put in the work to make your website more successful and increase its value. Make sure you’re willing to put in the work before you invest if you want to see a financial return.
Top Marketplaces to Buy Digital Real Estate
Decentraland: This is one of the largest place marketplaces for digital real estate. It allows you to buy and sell land, estates, avatar wearables and other digital goods. The Ethereum network is the foundation for this digital world.
SuperWorld: This company has created a virtual map of Earth. It allows you to buy real-life plots of land, that now exist in the metaverse. For example, you could buy the Taj Mahal, NYC’s 5th avenue or your own home. Someone already purchased The White House for about $354 USD. In total, it has 64.8 billion plots of land for sale.
Somnium Space: Somnium Space describes itself as “a new virtual reality world.” This includes allowing users to buy and sell virtual land.
The Sandbox: A virtual metaverse where players can play, build, own, and monetize their virtual experiences. It boasts NFT collections by Snoop Dogg, Care Bears and Atari.
Upland.me: This platform is still in beta. However, it will be a digital metaverse where users can buy, sell and trade digital real estate.
OpenSea: Currently the largest NFT marketplace. It has a section for virtual land. Here you can buy and sell land parcels, wearables and names from projects like Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space and The Sandbox.
Keep in mind that things happen quickly in the metaverse. New companies are popping up every day with lofty ambitions of creating a new metaverse. As we saw with Meta Platforms, larger corporations are also willing to pivot. If you want to invest in digital real estate, be sure to do a deep dive into all existing marketplaces.
As extreme heat stifles communities around the world this week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that it has “no immediate plans” to give heatwaves names. The July 19th announcement seems to pump the brakes on growing calls to come up with a strategy for ranking and naming heatwaves around the world.
In the US, heat kills more people than any other weather-related disaster. Globally, it kills 5 million people a year. But heat spells haven’t always spurred the same careful preparations people might take to, say, shelter from a major storm. The goal of naming heatwaves would be to make it easier to communicate the risks they pose to the public so that people can take measures to stay safe. In the US, heat kills more people than any other weather-related disaster
For decades, names have played a big role in early warnings for dangerous storms. Warning people about hurricane “Sandy” or “Harvey” just became a lot easier than identifying a storm by latitude and longitude. The US’s National Hurricane Center started giving Atlantic storms monikers from an official list in 1953. Currently, the WMO maintains rotating lists of names for the Atlantic and other regions.
Some advocates want to apply a similar naming mechanism to heatwaves. Seville, Spain, is set to become the first city in the world to test out the idea later this year. Officials in Athens, Greece, and California have contemplated doing the same. But the WMO apparently has some reservations, saying that it’s “currently considering the advantages and disadvantages of naming heatwaves.”“What has been established for tropical cyclone events may not necessarily translate easily across to heatwaves,” the WMO said in its news release this week. “Caution should be exercised when comparing or applying lessons or protocols from one hazard type to another, due to the important differences in the physical nature and impacts of storms and heatwaves.”“False alarms” are one concern for the WMO. Heatwaves can be forecast up to 10 days out in many parts of the world. But if the forecast for an extreme heatwave is inaccurate — maybe it’s not as hot as expected or it hits a different region than anticipated — then people might lose faith in the warnings and stop heeding them.
“False alarms”
The other caveat with heat, the WMO says, is that heat-related deaths can happen even when it’s not extraordinarily hot outside. If someone is continuously exposed to more sweltering conditions, say, in the workplace or in a home without air conditioning, they can become ill even if there isn’t an officially declared heatwave.
To prevent confusion ahead of a potential disaster, the WMO also says that any “pilot heatwave naming” should at least be tied into a country’s official warning system in the absence of a broader international framework.
Seville is piloting a project this year that will test a new alert system to warn residents ahead of a heatwave. Extreme heat events will be categorized based on their severity, and those forecast to have the greatest impact on the city will get a name. The first five have already been chosen: Zoe, Yago, Xenia, Wenceslao, and Vega.
“We are the first city in the world to take a step that will help us plan and take measures when this type of meteorological event happens—particularly because heat waves always hit the most vulnerable,” Antonio Muñoz, the mayor of Seville, said in a June 21st press release.
Parts of Europe literally buckled and burned under a brutal heatwave this week — even in places with typically milder summers. In the UK, record-breaking temperaturesbuckled train tracks and even an airport runway. London’s fire service responded to more blazes in a day than it had since World War II, according to Sadiq Khan, the city’s mayor. And 100 million people in the US are under heat alerts today.
Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense as greenhouse gas emissions heat our planet. More than a third of heat deaths can be attributed to climate change, according to research published last year.
A persistent period of unusually hot days is referred to as an extreme heat event or a heat wave. Heat waves are more than just uncomfortable: they can lead to illness and death, particularly among older adults, the very young, and other vulnerable populations (see the Heat-Related Deaths and Heat-Related Illnesses indicators).
Prolonged exposure to excessive heat can lead to other impacts as well—for example, damaging crops, injuring or killing livestock, and increasing the risk of wildfires. Prolonged periods of extreme heat can lead to power outages as heavy demands for air conditioning strain the power grid.
Unusually hot days and heat wave events are a natural part of day-to-day variation in weather. As the Earth’s climate warms, however, hotter-than-usual days and nights are becoming more common (see the High and Low Temperatures indicator) and heat waves are expected to become more frequent and intense.2 Increases in these extreme heat events can lead to more heat-related illnesses and deaths, especially if people and communities do not take steps to adapt.3 Even small increases in extreme heat can result in increased deaths and illnesses.4
About the Indicator
This indicator examines trends over time in four key characteristics of heat waves in the United States:
Frequency: the number of heat waves that occur every year.
Duration: the length of each individual heat wave, in days.
Season length: the number of days between the first heat wave of the year and the last.
Intensity: how hot it is during the heat wave.
Heat waves can be defined in many different ways. For consistency across the country, Figures 1 and 2 define a heat wave as a period of two or more consecutive days when the daily minimum apparent temperature (the actual temperature adjusted for humidity) in a particular city exceeds the 85th percentile of historical July and August temperatures (1981–2010) for that city. EPA chose this definition for several reasons:
The most serious health impacts of a heat wave are often associated with high temperatures at night, which is usually the daily minimum.5 The human body needs to cool off at night, especially after a hot day. If the air stays too warm at night, the body faces extra strain as the heart pumps harder to try to regulate body temperature.
Adjusting for humidity is important because when humidity is high, water does not evaporate as easily, so it is harder for the human body to cool off by sweating. That is why health warnings about extreme heat are often based on the “heat index,” which combines temperature and humidity.
The 85th percentile of July and August temperatures equates to the nine hottest days during the hottest two months of the year. A temperature that is typically only recorded nine times during the hottest part of the year is rare enough that most people would consider it to be unusually hot.
By using the 85th percentile for each individual city, Figures 1 and 2 define “unusual” in terms of local conditions. After all, a specific temperature like 95°F might be unusually hot in one city but perfectly normal in another. Plus, people in relatively warm regions (such as the Southwest) may be better acclimated and adapted to hot weather.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calculated apparent temperature for this indicator based on temperature and humidity measurements from long-term weather stations, which are generally located at airports. Figures 1 and 2 focus on the 50 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas that have recorded weather data from a consistent location without many missing days over the time period examined.
The year 1961 was chosen as the starting point because most major cities have collected consistent data since at least that time. Figure 3 provides another perspective to gauge the size and frequency of prolonged heat wave events. It shows the U.S. Annual Heat Wave Index, which tracks the occurrence of heat wave conditions across the contiguous 48 states from 1895 to 2021. This index defines a heat wave as a period lasting at least four days with an average temperature that would only be expected to persist over four days once every 10 years, based on the historical record. The index value for a given year depends on how often such severe heat waves occur and how widespread they are….
