The recent activities and news prove the US is unable to control the situation. The hacking incidents such as the exposure of the Russian car owners, the Ethereum crypto hard wallets, and Indian Truecaller prove it. The latest hacking activities that were reported included dark-net as the platform for trading.
For instance, a hacker took over 129 million Russian car owner’s data and disclosed them to the dark-net. He exchanged the data for cryptocurrencies mainly Bitcoin. Ethereum went through a security breach as well, and the hacker attempted to sell the data of three popular crypto hard wallets.
The Ethereum and the Russian car driver’s data were reported earlier, while the latest hacking news was regarding the recently stolen credit card, which happened on May 29, 2020. The cybersecurity firm revealed that more than 80,000 credit card information was exposed to the dark-net in this event. The data were related to various countries including the United States (33K), France (14K), Australia (5K), United Kingdom (5K), Canada (2K), Singapore (1.2 K), and India (1.3K).
The card data included the name of the cardholder, CVV code, and expiration date, for both Visa and Master-card is traded $5 per unit. Interestingly the price isn’t dependent on the card’s value. The same happened in other cases, where valuable data were given away with considerably low prices. Although they mentioned the information regarding the card’s country wasn’t valid, the information contained the card holder’s address, which made the process of finding the address easier.
For resolving this, cyber published a search engine, for people to find out whether their credit cards have been hacked or not. It includes over 40 billion records.
With all these incidents, the congressional Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy, witnesses, and congress-people gathered on May 38, to discuss the security issues, during which they all expressed their concerns regarding the latest security issues and the breaches.
In this gathering Guillermo Christensen, a partner at law firm Ice Miller, stated:
“We are always playing catch up with the criminals. […] It’s very hard to find people who are as qualified as some of these criminal hackers, frankly, to take apart their schemes and trace them.”
They declared many different issues responsible for these incompatibilities. One of these issues was the over-classification of government information. Although he appreciated the information shared among the government and the private sector, they also declared that the information presented could have better impacts on the performances of the private sector if the government had presented a more comprehensive data in each case. Regarding this, Naftali Harris, co-founder and CEO of SentiLink, an anti-fraud software company stated: “The information sharing between the private sector and the public sector is very valuable but it could be better.”
In this virtual meeting, Emanuel Cleaver, the subcommittee chairman, asked about the vulnerability of Fintech. In response, Tom Kellerman stated the following:
“Financial institutions have the best security in the world, but because of telework and because of the customized malware or weaponry that are being developed in the dark web, primarily the Russian-speaking dark web. […] They’ve learned ways around the perimeter defense of the network security espoused by the standards of regulators around the world.”
He further explained the well-defended financial network is in danger of more exposure by telework since it allowed the hackers to access the data effortlessly.
“The greatest vulnerability of Fintech is they build out these APIs that allow them to connect to other financial institutions as well as other Fintech vendors. Those APIs themselves are being exploited left and right.”
Conclusion
The final statements of this assembly were declared by the chairman expressing concerns about losing the battle and explaining how the information concerned him. In conclusion, the whole situation including the breaches and hackings that happened involving the dark-net shows the inadequacy of the US government’s performance in controlling virtual networking. This proves that having COVID-19 and turning to the internet for solving problems didn’t turn out well, and we are expecting more bad news soon.
Fintech: Financial technology is the technology and innovation that aims to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. It is an emerging industry that uses technology to improve activities in finance.
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