Spotlight on blockchain security

NEW DELHI: Whenever a trend experiences significant growth in terms of users and capital flows, it attracts more bad actors to that space, as new attack vectors open up, and cybersecurity practices in new spaces are often not fully understood or put in place.

Additionally, some of these trends and technologies are being adopted at a rapid rate, increasing the need to simultaneously adopt good security practices to keep data and crypto assets safe.

Let’s take a quick look at some alarming statistics. It is estimated that every 14 seconds, a person or company falls victim to a ransomware attack. Small businesses are the main targets of cyberattacks: Most small businesses continue to be the smallest investors in cyber security despite making up 13% of the cybercrime market!

With the growing popularity of metaverse and NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) comes more security challenges as well.

Many of the current metaverse projects require users to connect to their cryptocurrency wallets in order to interact with them, as gaming and interaction must be tied to a unique identity – which is the wallet’s public address. And just like in the real world, your wallet is used to buy things like land, clothes, art and other things. But having an attached crypto wallet like MetaMask is where the security concerns in the metaverse start to take shape, so we need to look at that and other cybersecurity concerns in the metaverse.

Lately, there have been countless reports of compromised wallets in the metaverse, resulting in stolen funds and NFTs. Everything from fake airdrops intended to phish users’ accounts, to compromised keys, metaverse adds another complex attack vector to the blockchain. In addition, VR technologies such as Oculus and HTC Vive, which will become a centerpiece of metaverse interaction, have also been shown to be vulnerable to hacks

NFTs are cryptographic collection tokens that represent something unique and cannot be replicated. Over the past couple of years, the market for NFT sales has quadrupled to $250 million, and has seen famous artists like Beeple sell their crypto art through NFTs for millions of dollars. These large sums of money and new technology have attracted a whole new wave of consumers into the crypto space, and every time a new technology sector experiences massive growth, cybercriminals naturally have more opportunities to exploit users.

Recently, OpenSea – the primary marketplace for NFTs – needed to fix a vulnerability in their platform that would allow hackers to drain users’ wallets by sending them a malicious NFT. For example, you might open up your wallet one day, notice an apparently free NFT, try to send that NFT to another wallet or just interact with it in some way, and from there the hacker can siphon money from the wallet. This hack would work because the user would reveal wallet details in the process.

A clear overview of the various blockchain security issues shows the contribution in the existing state of blockchain security. The awareness of vulnerabilities in blockchain security is crucial to creating better networks and systems. Furthermore, technical advances such as AI-based solutions for infrastructure, transaction and code analysis can explain new trends in blockchain security.

(The author is founder, India Blockchain Alliance)