As cryptocurrency losses from safety breaches surge previous $1.5 billion, cybersecurity consultants are urging exchanges to enhance bug bounty applications to draw prime moral hackers and strengthen platform safety.
On March 3, blockchain safety agency CertiK stated that crypto misplaced from hacks in February had reached $1.53 billion, with the Bybit hack accounting for almost all of losses at greater than $1.4 billion. Excluding the incident, CertiK reported that different exploits had resulted in $126 million in losses, together with a $49 million Infini hack.
Moral hacker Marwan Hachem informed Cointelegraph that the surge in crypto hack losses highlighted a rising want for higher bug bounty applications.
Hachem stated that to stop such exploits, exchanges should provide increased and extra interesting bug bounty rewards to white hat hackers.
An “out of scope” bug led to a $1.4 billion hack
Hachem, chief working officer at cybersecurity agency FearsOff, stated crypto exchanges should provide increased rewards to moral hackers to stop comparable exploits.
In keeping with the safety skilled, the bug bounty program of Secure, Bybit’s multisignature pockets supplier, thought of bugs associated to the entrance and back-end out of scope, that means those that recognized these safety points weren’t eligible for rewards.
The safety skilled stated the Bybit hack occurred due to a bug that was not within the scope rewarded by the bounty program. “What they thought of out of scope led to the most important crypto hack in historical past,” Hachem informed Cointelegraph. He added:
“We regularly breach platforms via bugs present in out-of-scope belongings. Moral hackers wouldn’t get rewarded for such findings, however criminals exploited them and stole $1.5 billion from Bybit.”
Bybit’s official bug bounty affords a most of $4,000 on its web site and as much as $10,000 on HackerOne — quantities that pale compared to the potential rewards for malicious hackers.
Hachem stated it’s higher to pre-emptively give white hat hackers greater rewards as a substitute of ready for a significant hack to occur and provide 10% of the stolen funds as a white hat reward. The manager stated this solely “emboldens unhealthy actors.”
“Motivating prime moral hackers to dedicate their time and a spotlight to testing an alternate by providing increased rewards will drastically enhance its safety, can be so much cheaper, and can safeguard its fame,” Hachem informed Cointelegraph.
Associated: Bybit hackers resume laundering actions, transferring one other 62,200 ETH
Adopting stricter safety measures
Alongside higher bug bounty applications, a CertiK spokesperson informed Cointelegraph that stopping future exploits just like the Bybit hack requires adopting stricter safety measures.
A CertiK spokesperson informed Cointelegraph that air-gapped signing units, non-persistent OS environments for transaction approvals and enhanced authentication layers for high-value transactions ought to turn out to be business requirements.
“Common red-team workouts and phishing simulations may assist mitigate social engineering dangers,” the spokesperson stated.
CertiK’s report revealed that Bybit’s exploit resulted from a phishing assault that tricked multisignature signers into approving a malicious contract improve. In the meantime, the Infini hack stemmed from an admin non-public key leak, permitting unauthorized withdrawals.
CertiK stated each incidents underscored the dangers of blind signing and insufficient transaction verification. “These instances emphasize the necessity for stronger authentication, real-time transaction monitoring, and extra resilient UI safety to stop manipulation,” CertiK added.
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