A practical case of cyber threat protection using Sentinel Protocol

A few weeks ago, Yuzo Kano, the Founder of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer, joined the Tokyo FinTech Telegram Channel.

If only…

The pseudonym “@yuzokano” was acting a little bit weird, and using words — knowing Kano-san — that did not feel right. So all it takes is a quick email and confirmation that indeed, Kano-san is not on Telegram, and we were dealing with an imposter.

The imposter is easily removed from our Telegram Channel, but how can we make sure that others are protected as well? Thankfully, we are users of Sentinel Protcol’s free UPPward Chrome extension. The UPPward pop-up banner turns green when you visit authentic websites and social accounts, and allows you to verify cryptocurrency addresses as well. The extension is also available for Firefox and Brave browsers.

So we submitted the Telegram ID “@yuzokano” to the Sentinel Protocol team, where it got blacklisted within hours in their Threat Reputation Database (TRDB) on the blockchain, and that information became immediately available for sharing with UPPward and TRDB users worldwide (please see title picture). Obviously, this is a simple case of cybersecurity, however, many zero day attacks remain unresolved for weeks, if not months, so the agility of the crowdsourced Sentinel Protocol platform is something we appreciate. Please go ahead and try out the browser extension yourself — and be careful out there, there are just too many scams and ransomware attacks.

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