Proposed Legal Reforms Aid UK Crypto Dreams – but Offer Scant Hope for Bitcoin Developers Sued by Craig Wright⁣ #legalreforms #ukcrypto #bitcoindevelopers #proposed #sued https://ayr.app/l/QyRg

Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies
Maria Apostolaki (ETH Zürich)
Presented at the
2017 IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy
May 22–24, 2017
San Jose, CA
http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2017/

ABSTRACT
As the most successful cryptocurrency to date, Bitcoin constitutes a target of choice for attackers. While many attack vectors have already been uncovered, one important vector has been left out though: attacking the currency via the Internet routing infrastructure itself. Indeed, by manipulating routing advertisements (BGP hijacks) or by naturally intercepting traffic, Autonomous Systems (ASes) can intercept and manipulate a large fraction of Bitcoin traffic. This paper presents the first taxonomy of routing attacks and their impact on Bitcoin, considering both small-scale attacks, targeting individual nodes, and large-scale attacks, targeting the network as a whole. While challenging, we show that two key properties make routing attacks practical: (i) the efficiency of routing manipulation; and (ii) the significant centralization of Bitcoin in terms of mining and routing. Specifically, we find that any network attacker can hijack few ( less than 100) BGP prefixes to isolate ~50% of the mining power—even when considering that mining pools are heavily multi-homed. We also show that on-path network attackers can considerably slow down block propagation by interfering with few key Bitcoin messages. We demonstrate the feasibility of each attack against the deployed Bitcoin software. We also quantify their effectiveness on the current Bitcoin topology using data collected from a Bitcoin supemode combined with BGP routing data. The potential damage to Bitcoin is worrying. By isolating parts of the network or delaying block propagation, attackers can cause a significant amount of mining power to be wasted, leading to revenue losses and enabling a wide range of exploits such as double spending. To prevent such effects in practice, we provide both short and long-term countermeasures, some of which can be deployed immediately.

The UK’s financial regulator, along with local police, descended upon illegally operated cryptocurrency automatic teller machines (ATMs) as part of a continued crackdown.

The Financial Conduct Authority inspected sites in Exeter, Nottingham and Sheffield to stop the illegal activity, the regulator said in a statement on Friday.

“Crypto ATMs operating without FCA registration are illegal,” said FCA’s Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight Therese Chambers in a statement. “The action we’ve taken over the past few months and wider work shows that we will act to stop illegal activity.”

Chambers called crypto high-risk and said they are not currently regulated.

The FCA said it worked with the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit and the Nottinghamshire Police force on the inspections. 

Criminals use crypto ATMs to launder illegally obtained cash, said Peter Highway, economic crime unit manager at the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit. 

The FCA said it will gather evidence and consider taking further action following the inspections. 

Crypto ATMs around the world.

Crypto ATMs allow people to buy or convert money into crypto, and the FCA says no crypto ATM operators are currently registered with the agency.

There are 17 bitcoin ATMs in the UK., according to Coin ATM Radar. 

In the U.S., there are upwards of 29,000, according to that site, with the majority big cities such as Washington D.C., New York and Los Angeles. 

Past raids.

The FCA raided several properties around Leeds suspected of having illegal crypto ATMs in February. 

Those raids were believed to be part of the UK’s first crackdown on illegal crypto ATMs, according to the FCA’s announcement at the time. 

The UK has also cracked down on other sectors within crypto. 

In February, the FCA said all crypto firms marketing to UK consumers, including firms based overseas, will need to comply with a new UK financial promotions regime.

https://cryptonews.com/news/uk-regulator-descends-upon-illegal-crypto-atms-latest-raid.htm

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The world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance and its CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao were sued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for operating what the regulator alleged were an ‘illegal’ exchange and a ‘sham’ compliance program.

#Binance #Crypto #Business #Finance #Lawsuit #Cryptocurrency #News #Reuters #newsfeed #China

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