WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - Mar 22

Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter!

Users of EOS blockchain poisoned

Okay, not literally, but there’s an attack called “address poisoning” that occurred en masse on Wednesday. A lot of people who send crypto tend to send it to the same places repeatedly, and one of the easiest ways to get the address of the intended recipient is to copy it from your last transaction. Address poisoning is when bad actors send a tiny amount of a token to a large number of wallet addresses hoping that instead of selecting the address they intend, they’ll select the address of the scammer’s wallet and send it to them instead. Since transactions on the blockchain are irreversible, this can be a pretty common attack, so please be very careful if you’re ever copy/pasting transaction info.

Learn more here.

Speaking of not copy/pasting…

There are a variety of ways bad actors can compromise your crypto wallet, and we saw news this week of yet another way. A new security threat has been identified on Microsoft’s PCs that targets crypto wallets on Google Chrome browser extensions. Basically, the malicious software, called StilachiRAT, monitors the data stored in your browser and in your clipboard, meaning it can read what you have copied. Thankfully, the malware is not widespread at this point, so you probably don’t have to worry too much as long as you’re careful.

Regardless, it’s super important never to copy/paste your private keys, always keep your software up to date, never click suspicious links or install unverified software, and use encrypted password managers. While this isn’t foolproof, it’s considered best practices, and if you think you might have been affected, definitely run antivirus software (Microsoft Defender can catch it), and if you need to go extreme you can reinstall your entire operating system to start over.

Learn more here.

Cosmos integrates EVM

The Cosmos ecosystem has over 200 “appchains” - similar to L2s - that run on the Cosmos SDK. Before now, developers were able to integrate Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility but it required additional, non-standardized steps. This brought in the possibility of mistakes or inefficiencies in the code. With a recent update, Cosmos’ Interchain Foundation made the Evmos framework open-source, allowing appchains to use a standardized software stack for full EVM compatibility. Why does this matter as a user? ERC-20 tokens are now more valuable than ETH on Ethereum’s mainnet, so greater interoperability with Cosmos will allow users to access more liquidity and app-integrations.

Learn more here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore