Meet The Wild West of Crypto Exchanges

Crypto is ready to change the world and fix many of our existing security problems and also contribute to building a new (and more trusted) world, but is the world ready for crypto exchanges? A new hack of nearly half a billion dollars has just been announced, and by a company who had not even registered with a financial regulator.

Before I start many of my presentations, I often show this slide, in order to show that crypto is amazing, but it is let down by a whole lot of things … especially humans not understanding security:

I remember hearing that, in the UK, for the first time in a single year, there were no actual physical bank robberies. Why? Because there are often much better pickings for criminals if they can hack their way into a bank. As we move into a crypto world, the opportunities for cyber criminals will increase by the day.

So which is the “crime” that is the easiest to implement (just running a script), most likely to gain you the most in return (a gain of 10s of millions), and have virtually no chance in getting caught (where money transfers are almost impossible to trace for their origin)? Crypto wallet and/or ICO (Initial Coin Offering)…