In an era when everyone knows someone who’s started an ICO, it’s difficult to be surprised when new research pops up showing just how vulnerable they may be to attack. A report by Positive.com—an ICO security auditor—shows that an average of five vulnerabilities show up in each ICO from 2017. To add insult to injury, a bit under half (47%) of these vulnerabilities were of “medium” or “high” severity.
“In an ICO, time is of the essence, and short time frames mean that anticipating attacks well in advance is critical for avoiding financial losses. The latest figures have shown the rapidly increasing rate of crime and fraud on the cryptocurrency market, with cybercriminals recognizing the opportunity presented by the dramatic rise of the cryptocurrency market in recent months,” said Leigh-Anne Galloway, cybersecurity lead at Positive.
It’s a bit difficult to discern how significant this could be. It only takes one exploited vulnerability to bring an ICO’s progress to a grinding halt.
We already know from a report by Hosho that up to 10% of ICO funds raised have been drained by hackers who found out how to tweak things to their advantage. Given that ICOs have raised billions of dollars altogether, this figure is somewhere in the hundreds of millions.
“The second a company goes public with an intention to do an ICO, it’s waving a huge flag to cyber criminals that it’s both valuable and also in a very vulnerable phase of its company growth,” Galloway added.
This means, according to Galloway, that there’s an added responsibility on the part of ICO organizers to make absolutely sure that their development is solid.
And then there’s the fact that many scammers attempt to take advantage of the roaring success of some of these projects, which is what led Savedroid CEO Dr. Yassin Hankir to take drastic and brash measures to spread awareness of the topic.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
