New research has discovered a boost in the number of fake Flash installers placing cryptocurrency mining malware on computers — as well as installing the latest version of Flash on users’ machines.
“As early as August 2018, some samples impersonating Flash updates have borrowed pop-up notifications from the official Adobe installer. These fake Flash updates install unwanted programs like an XMRig cryptocurrency miner, but this malware can also update a victim’s Flash Player to the latest version,” wrote Brad Duncan of Palo Alto Networks. “Because of the legitimate Flash update, a potential victim may not notice anything out of the ordinary. Meanwhile, an XMRig cryptocurrency miner or other unwanted program is quietly running in the background of the victim’s Windows computer.”
In other news, cryptocurrencies falling prices are hitting Coinbase hard. Data from venture firm Tribe Capital revealed that the number of monthly U.S. customers buying and selling on the exchange platform in September fell about 80 percent from December, when the price of bitcoin reached its high of nearly $20,000. Since then, bitcoin has fallen about 60 percent, which has resulted in Coinbase’s users taking flight. Bloomberg said that a representative for the company declined to comment on the report.
The news comes as $13 billon of value was wiped out of the crypto market in about three hours on Thursday (Oct. 11), as bitcoin dropped by roughly 5 percent, and Ethereum and XRP fell by more than 10 percent.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will be taking a closer look at its blockchain pilot by the end of the year, according to CoinDesk. The agency is investigating whether a blockchain-based platform can streamline shipment tracking around the world as part of the replacement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
Members of the government advisory group Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) met earlier this month. At that time, Celeste Catano, a COAC member on the committee’s emerging technologies group and Global Product Manager for supply chain software firm BluJay Solutions, revealed that the technology is in the evaluation phase now.
“We just completed our testing last week on the blockchain solution for NAFTA and CAFTA verifications,” said Catano. “Tomorrow we are meeting with some of the technical folks who work on the project to assess how did it go, what did we learn, what can we do better, is this the right technology for these types of projects. We hope to have some recommendations by the December meeting.”
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