#Trump himself has called Bitcoin a scam before | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

newstfionline · 9 days

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Thursday, September 12, 2024

Thousands in the dark as Hurricane Francine strikes Louisiana (AP) Hurricane Francine slammed into the Louisiana coast Wednesday evening as a dangerous Category 2 storm that knocked out electricity to more than a quarter-million customers and threatened widespread flooding as it sent a potentially deadly storm surge rushing inland along the Gulf Coast. Francine crashed ashore in Terrebonne Parish, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of Morgan City, the National Hurricane Center announced at 4 p.m. CDT. Packing top sustained winds near 100 mph (155 kph), the hurricane then battered a fragile coastal region that hasn’t fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021. Morgan City Fire Chief Alvin Cockerham said the hurricane quickly flooded streets, snapped power lines and sent tree limbs crashing down. Power outages in Louisiana topped 261,000 hours after landfall, spread widely across southeast Louisiana. Blackouts affected the majority of homes and businesses in coastal parishes nearest where the storm came ashore as well as their inland neighbors.

Tariffs, the Solution to Almost Any Problem? (NYT) It has been more than five years since former President Donald J. Trump called himself a “Tariff Man,” but since then, his enthusiasm for tariffs seems only to have grown. Mr. Trump has long maintained that imposing tariffs on foreign products can protect American factories, narrow the gap between what the United States exports and what it imports, and bring uncooperative foreign governments to heel. But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has made even more expansive claims about the power of tariffs, including that they will help pay for child care, combat inflation, finance a U.S. sovereign wealth fund and help preserve the dollar’s pre-eminent role in the global economy. Economists have been skeptical of many of these assertions. While tariffs generate some level of revenue, in many cases they could create only a small amount of the funding needed to pursue some of the goals that Mr. Trump has outlined. And tariffs could actually backfire on the U.S. economy, by inviting retaliation from foreign governments and raising costs for consumers. The cost of tariffs tend to be borne by American businesses and households, rather than foreign companies. Consumers simply have to pay more for things they need or want to buy.

Tyreek Hill’s traffic stop revives discussion about the realities faced by Black drivers (AP) After his traffic stop in Miami on Sunday, Tyreek Hill talked about “the talk”—instructions passed down in Black families for generations about what to do when pulled over by police. Keep your hands in sight, preferably on the steering wheel. Avoid any sudden movements. Don’t talk back to the officer. And above all, follow instructions without error or delay. Heeding that advice in the heat of the moment can be hard, as Hill’s own experience showed when the star wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins was stopped for speeding and reckless driving before the team’s first game of the season. His interaction with police—captured in a now-viral cellphone video and body camera footage—escalated and is yet again prompting a larger discussion about the realities of “driving while Black.” According to a national law enforcement survey, traffic stops of Black drivers are more likely to include the threat or use of force.

Americans lost $5.6 billion last year in cryptocurrency fraud scams, the FBI says (AP) Americans were duped out of more than $5.6 billion last year through fraud schemes involving cryptocurrency, the FBI said in a report released Monday that shows a 45% jump in losses from 2022. The FBI received nearly 70,000 complaints in 2023 by victims of financial fraud involving bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies, according to the FBI. The most rampant scheme was investment fraud, which accounted for $3.96 billion of the losses. Scammers will often make contact through dating apps or social media to build trust over several weeks or months before suggesting cryptocurrency investing, the FBI said. Once the relationship is built, they convince the targets to use fake websites or apps to invest their money, sometimes even allowing the victims to withdraw small amounts of money early on to make it seem legitimate.

Mexican lawmakers flee protesters before passing judicial overhaul (Washington Post) Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday to abolish the current judicial system and allow citizens to choose nearly all of the country’s judges, a drastic change that U.S. officials warn could pose “a major risk” to the democracy of its top trading partner. The ruling leftist party, Morena, barely mustered the two-thirds of Senate votes required for the constitutional amendment amid furious protests by students and judicial workers. Eighty-six lawmakers voted in favor, while 41 voted against. Raucous demonstrators burst into the chamber during the debate, chanting “Traitors!” and shattering a glass door. Lawmakers escaped to a nearby colonial-era building that formerly housed the Senate, and resumed the session under heavy police guard. The amendment has already passed the lower house and is likely to be quickly ratified at the state level, after which it would take effect. Morena has a majority in 27 of the 32 state legislatures.

UK economy stagnates unexpectedly in growth challenge for new government (Reuters) Britain's economy stagnated for a second month running in July as manufacturing output dropped sharply, an inauspicious start for the new government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer who wants to accelerate the pace of growth. The country's shift towards a services-dominated economy is accelerating, pushing manufacturing's share of economic output to a historic low and setting the nation apart from its global peers.

Ukraine braces for hardest winter due to intensified Russian attacks on energy infrastructure (AP) Ukraine’s prime minister warned Tuesday that the country could be facing its toughest winter since the full-scale Russian invasion began, as airstrikes against the country’s beleaguered energy infrastructure intensify. Russian attacks continue to hammer Ukraine’s energy generation capacity, leaving the country heavily reliant on its three functioning nuclear power stations and electricity imports from European Union countries. “Energy resilience is one of our greatest challenges this year,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a news conference in Kyiv. According to the United Nations and the World Bank, Ukraine lost more than half of its power-generating capacity in the first 14 months of the war, with the situation continuing to deteriorate.

Ukraine woos the Republicans (Washington Post) As Trump looms, Ukraine is turning to its evangelicals to woo the Republicans. There is a growing realization among Ukraine’s leaders of the need to forge close ties with its evangelical Christian community, Europe’s largest, who number between 800,000 and 1 million. The government is betting that its own evangelicals can be a bridge to their counterparts in the United States, who are influential in the Republican Party and could assist in their lobbying efforts for more aid.

Afghanistan, 23 years after 9/11 (Washington Post) Just days after the attacks of 9/11, then-President George W. Bush went to Congress to lay out the scope of his administration’s response. Al-Qaeda’s unprecedented terrorist strike launched the United States on its sweeping “war on terror” and placed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan immediately in Washington’s crosshairs. But 23 years after 9/11, the Taliban hold sway. Their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic doctrines is the law of the land. Their draconian edicts once more asphyxiate Afghanistan society. And Afghan women, as they were a generation ago, are yet again thwarted from school, restricted in all they can do and banned from revealing their faces and even their voices in public. Successive U.S. administrations poured in tens of billions of dollars into the reconstruction of the country, propped up a perennially fragile, frequently venal Washington-aligned government in Kabul, and presided over bloody insurgencies and counterinsurgencies more than two decades. When the resurgent Taliban swept aside the forces of the U.S.-backed regime in 2021, as U.S. and NATO powers telegraphed their plans for withdrawal, it was a brutal shock for Western policy elites. But for the triumphant Taliban, it was the inexorable redemption of their view of the world and their nation’s history. Unbowed, the Taliban have only entrenched their rule.

Flash flood sweeps away hamlet as Vietnam’s storm toll rises to 155 dead (AP) A flash flood swept away an entire hamlet in northern Vietnam, killing 30 people and leaving dozens missing as deaths from a typhoon and its aftermath climbed to 155 on Wednesday. Vietnamese state broadcaster VTV said the torrent of water gushing down from a mountain in Lao Cai province Tuesday buried Lang Nu hamlet with 35 families in mud and debris. Only about a dozen are known so far to have survived. Rescuers have recovered 30 bodies and are continuing the search for about 65 others.

Pope lands in economic power Singapore after a joyous visit to impoverished, devout East Timor (AP) Pope Francis flew to Singapore on Wednesday for the final leg of his trip through Asia, arriving in one of the world’s richest countries from one of its poorest after a record-setting final Mass in East Timor. After a brief farewell ceremony, Francis, the Vatican delegation and journalists traveling with him flew to Singapore aboard local carrier Aero Dili’s only aircraft, an Airbus A320. Francis wrapped up his visit to East Timor with a rally Wednesday morning of its young people, who make up the majority of the 1.3 million population. He urged them to work together to build their young country, using the foundations of older generations who formally secured their independence from Indonesia in 2002, to grow in peace, prosperity and reconciliation.

US says Israel should change its way of operating in the West Bank after American killed (Washington Post) Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israeli security forces to make “fundamental changes” in the way they operate in the occupied West Bank, the strongest comments yet from a U.S. official after the Israeli military admitted that it was “highly likely” it had “unintentionally” shot dead an American Turkish citizen at a demonstration last week.

Israeli airstrikes on Palestinian territories kill dozens more (AP) Israeli strikes on Palestinian territories have killed more than two-dozen Palestinians on Wednesday, according to local officials. They say an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and at least 20 people, including 16 women and children, were killed in the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s Health Ministry says Tuesday’s strike on a tent camp in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone killed at least 19 people. The Health Ministry says over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count. The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.

Polaris Dawn (Space.com) A commercial space crew has flown higher above Earth than anyone who has traveled since the last Apollo astronauts went to the moon. The four members of the Polaris Dawn mission, riding aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft "Resilience," climbed into an elliptical orbit with a high point, or apogee, of 870 miles (1,400.7 kilometers) on Tuesday (Sep. 10). They reached the record distance about 15 hours after lifting off at 5:23 a.m. EDT (0923 GMT) from Florida earlier in the day and circling the planet about eight times in an initial orbit of 190 by 1,200 miles (306 by 1,930 km). The crew's top altitude more than doubled the maximum height that NASA's space shuttle reached when it deployed the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and surpassed the previous record for a crewed spacecraft remaining in Earth orbit of 853 miles (1,373 km), achieved by NASA's Gemini 11 mission in 1966.

#headlines #news

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sycriptouk · 3 years

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Why Bitcoin Will Lead Global Economy, Scaramucci Shares Projections https://bitcoinist.com/why-bitcoin-will-lead-global-economy-scaramucci-shares-projections/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-bitcoin-will-lead-global-economy-scaramucci-shares-projections

The top financer Anthony Scaramucci commented that being able to see the potential of Bitcoin is just a matter of studying it, judging that all it takes to convince someone to invest in the cryptocurrency is understanding it.

Scaramucci stated during a CNBC interview that important investors, “brilliant guys”, like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller, invested in bitcoin as a common conclusion from studying it and “doing the homework”.

Related Reading | Billionaire Steve Cohen Throws Himself Into Crypto After Initial Skepticism, Here’s Why

He suggested that he is not a blindsided bitcoin fanatic, but he invests in it because he sees “the technical properties associated.” However, he is still very enthusiastic as he sees this cryptocurrency as a “gigantic asset class” and “digital gold”.

Scaramucci said he has about a billion dollars in Bitcoin which he started accumulating last year and gave his oversight over the cryptocurrency’s future and value on the global economy. His reasons for investing in bitcoin shows a well thought and studied decision:

It is a ledger defined by math and when you think about the history of money, a ledger defined by math that has a scarcity to it where no politician or policymaker can corrupt it or add supply to it, I think it’s a fascinating thing and I think it will have a big position in the global economy over the next decade.

The hedge fund investor also commented on Putin’s recent opinions about Bitcoin. He thinks it needs to get more stable for someone like Putin to “accept it for its commodities inside of Russia”.

Thus, his personal projection is that the cryptocurrency is “10 years away from president Putin accepting it as a form of currency in his country.”

He described Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies in the market as “early adapted technologies” by comparing it to the early years of Facebook, Google, and Amazon when they had an “isolated volatility” before stabilizing and generating a great return.

Bitcoin Is Safer Than Trump’s Spac

On the other hand, Scaramucci gave his opinion on Digital World Acquisition Corp., the SPAC that partnered with former president Trump to take his social media platform public.

Scaramucci called Trump’s SPAC an obvious “meme stock”, and said the interest in it is due to nothing more than its relation to Trump. He also insinuated the stock could be masking second intentions, “next thing you know, the bees are onto something else.”

The lack of clarity that Trump’s SPAC -and Trump himself- provides leads Scaramucci to warn investors, saying that he would not have a long position nor a short one on that stock.

He told CNBC in another recent interview that he is eager for SPAC to do well because he is of the mind that its success would keep Trump’s hands away from the presidency:

I want that thing to go up like another 10 times. The more it goes up, the less likelihood Donald Trump is running for president in 2024,

Investing in Trump’s vision has a past of leading investors to bankruptcy while his money stays safe. Ironically, his personal opinions have been against Bitcoin, seeing it as “a scam” and a competitor “against the dollar”.

Although his comments have seemed to dip Bitcoin’s value before, the cryptocurrency has pushed back and risen to an all-time high in the midst of the ETF launch. As this happens, the dollar seems to weaken as a currency and the needs for amicable regulations of digital assets find a steady and stronger voice than Trump’s.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Price Dips After Trump Says Bitcoin ‘Seems Like A Scam’

On the other hand, Scaramucci’s attentive studies of bitcoin’s blockchain and the global economy have resulted in his firm, SkyBridge Capital, trusting the future and value of cryptocurrency.

The firm recently partnered with NAX’s trading platform with the intention of diving into the cryptocurrency world. Their fund (UNLOX) aims to incentivize institutions to use the blockchain’s capacity of securitizing assets.

Bitcoin trading at $62,438 in the daily chart | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

#IFTTT #Bitcoinist.com

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todaysciencology · 4 years

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Hacking of the most powerful people in the world on Twitter - picture yet to come?

The hacking of 130 powerful people at once is unlikely to be the only common bitcoin scam behind it

The former president of America, the most powerful country in the world, is likely to be the next president in the next four months. He and other contenders for the post, not only America, but the world's top billionaires, the founders of the world's top technology companies, the world's most valuable Company ... All these and a total of 130 people or companies like them, which can be said to run almost the whole world, all their Twitter accounts were hacked at once!

At the end of this scandal that lasted for hours, what did the hackers get? One and a half million dollars!

For the same reason, the bigger question now than how this scam on Twitter became possible is whether it is really possible to hack the accounts of the most powerful people in the world on such a large scale for just one and a half million dollars. Or is the whole scandal, and the potential damage it has caused, far deeper than it is now?

Let's unravel the whole thing one by one.

What really happened? Last week, for the first time in America's afternoon, almost identical tweets flowed from the top cryptocurrency-related accounts on Twitter (including @bitcoin), "We've joined hands with CryptoForHealth and are donating 5,000 to the Bitcoin community." There was also a link to a website (the website was blocked shortly after the news broke that Twitter had been hacked).

Then from the hacked Twitter handles, to the addresses of different bitcoin wallets, to the cryptocurrency-related accounts, to the almost identical tweets from the accounts of various experts - someone said, "We want to help the world in the situation that has arisen since Kovid-19." If there was such a thing, someone would say, "We support Bitcoin, so do you."

At the end of the tweet, giving a fixed bitcoin account number to the person donating to it was a double amount from the celebrity.

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Alan Musk, Apple Company etc. are known to make massive donations for social purposes even under the most ordinary circumstances. Plus, all of these people have millions of followers on Twitter. As a result, even though the account was hacked by only 130 people, the 'appeal for donations' reverberated all over the world at once! Each had an offer to 'double the one' and it was said that this offer is only enough for the next 30 minutes!

Realizing that something was amiss, Twitter took immediate action, hacked verified accounts were blocked, false tweets flowing from it were deleted, and then after a while everything was considered as normal.

How did the hacking happen? Twitter also offers a two-step verification method that makes any online account more secure. Apparently, all the people whose accounts have been hacked are so powerful that the people who manage their accounts have given them two-step protection.

One possibility is that SIM card swapping was also used in the hacking (in which OTP hackers get their own number by swapping a mobile company employee and swapping a certain number of SIMs). This hacking is unlikely to happen because the mobile numbers associated with the accounts of so many powerful people cannot be swapped at once. For many of these genuine people, instead of getting OTP on mobile, it is quite possible that authentication apps are considered more secure.

Now the FBI has begun investigating the entire hacking scandal. According to Twitter, direct access to celebrity accounts was obtained by firing on one of its own employees. This seems to be the most likely thing (the account of the founder of Twitter himself has also been hacked).

Trump's account was not hacked! Of particular note was the fact that the hacked accounts did not include the name of US President Donald Trump. One reason given is that his account has been given special protection in 2017 after his Twitter account was temporarily shut down by a Twitter employee. On the other hand, many people think that the presidential election planned in just four months is the reason for this. Before the US presidential election, Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal turned the minds and votes of American voters into a forcible, data-driven smart scandal, which led to the defeat of the supposedly victorious Hillary Clinton and the omnipotent Donald Trump. Russia is said to have used social media to change the outcome of the election. Is history repeating itself? With elections now being fought and won with the help of social media platforms, the weakness of such platforms is likely to worry the whole world.

Why this explosion on Twitter? When it comes to social media, Twitter is nothing compared to giant Facebook. Facebook has 2.6 billion users, while Twitter has barely 0.33 billion users. But Facebook is mostly a platform to stay in touch with friends and relatives, while Twitter is different.

Here is a gathering of world leaders. Top people from different parts of the world have become accustomed to tweeting words on Twitter and gradually the influence of Twitter has spread tremendously on the media, stockmarkets and politics.

The president of the United States sometimes chooses to announce a new policy on Twitter. Many of the world's big news first break on Twitter. The CEOs of big companies make announcements about their business on Twitter and this has caused a lot of turmoil in the stock markets.

That's why 130 celebrity accounts are being hacked on Twitter for just-1.5 million. If the hackers had assumed that the stock markets would be in turmoil, countries like the US and Korea could have made fake tweets from the hacked accounts that were on the verge of a nuclear war.

On the other hand, Twitter has remained silent on a very important question. Private direct messaging can also take place between different accounts, just like public tweets on Twitter. It is quite possible that all these celebrities are exchanging such direct messages inside and with other important people. Have hackers got all this data? If so, we can say for sure that the real picture is yet to come on Twitter or Twitter!

Why is Twitter an easy target? There are very few Twitter users compared to Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, but their reach is overwhelming. The world's top politicians, business tycoons, movie-sports celebrities and journalists are the most active on Twitter. If a person with millions of followers on Twitter tweets anything, it will spread all over the world again at a tremendous speed.

Because of this, hackers also get a 'kick' in hacking Twitter accounts. Hackers who have a blue tick on Twitter, that is, a verified account, hacking the accounts of 'powerful' people are looked upon with respect.

The problem with Twitter is that it exceeds its capacity!

The market value of a company like Facebook is twenty times higher than Twitter. Obviously, Twitter doesn't have as many resources as Facebook to secure its platform. Facebook has 48,000 team members worldwide, while Twitter has barely 5,100 team members worldwide.

In 2019, the founder of Twitter's own account was hacked.

A few days before this hack ... The most commonly used technique for hacking social media accounts is called 'SIM swapping', which involves intercepting an OTP by going to the target's mobile or e-mail by breaking into a mobile phone company or social media company's employee.

A few days before the massive hacking of Twitter, a user named 'Chevon' on a platform of people known as 'Ozyusers' (i.e. original gangsters!) And engaged in account hijacking, gave an e-mail to any Twitter account for just 250 250. Posted an offer to change the mail address. He also said that he would do the job for two to three thousand dollars if he wanted direct access to any Twitter account without falling into such a trap.

On the other hand, behind this hack is said to be the hand of a user named 'Plugwalks', who is estimated to be only 21 years old!

for more details kindly go to https://ift.tt/3bgFIf3 from Blogger https://ift.tt/3huVUfA via Youtube#Science #Technology

#Sciencology #Science #Technology

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blockcastcc · 4 years

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Wednesday’s Twitter hack would seem to spell regulatory doom for Bitcoin, which is widely distrusted in Washington. Some lawmakers – and U.S. President Donald Trump himself – associate it with crime.

In 2019 Trump tweeted he is not a fan of bitcoin and that “unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior.” He also reportedly told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “go after Bitcoin.”

But immediately following the hack, lawmakers seemed more focused on Twitter’s security problems rather than cryptocurrency’s role in the hack.

On Wednesday, high-profile accounts belonging to Elon Musk, Kanye West, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, cryptocurrency exchanges and many others were co-opted into a bitcoin scam that netted the hackers at least $100,000. Twitter struggled to resolve the issue, even temporarily blocking verified accounts’ abilities to tweet and reset their passwords. Security experts said the hack was likely deep in Twitter’s system, and therefore is not a quick fix.

Lawmakers were quick to respond.

See also: CoinDesk’s full coverage of the Twitter hack

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a vocal critic of tech platforms, fired off an open letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey soon after the hack went mainstream. The event, he said, “may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself.”

Hawley also asked whether there was a risk that President Trump’s account could have been hacked and how many users might have had their data stolen.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed he had met with Dorsey privately in 2018 and discussed implementing end-to-end encryption of users’ direct messages, which could contain sensitive information and may have been vulnerable during the hack. Wyden says Dorsey told him at the time that Twitter was working on encrypted DMs, but two years later it hadn’t delivered.

Read more: Twitter Hack 2020 Was Probably Done by a Bitcoiner – But Not a Savvy One

“This is a vulnerability that has lasted for far too long, and one that is not present in other, competing platforms. If hackers gained access to users’ DMs, this breach could have a breathtaking impact for years to come,” Wyden said in a statement.

Focusing blame

Meanwhile, some crypto supporters in Washington, D.C., aren’t worried the hack will cause lasting damage to the industry.

Coin Center Director of Communications Neeraj Agrawal noted that while Twitter was compromised, Bitcoin (or crypto) was not. And if the hackers’ goal was to make money, they failed miserably: Only a scant $123,200 in bitcoin flowed through the wallet listed, and it’s likely some of those funds were recycled through by the attackers.

The incident shines a spotlight on centralized points of failure, such as one individual on a single platform being able to compromise numerous accounts.

“Somebody who has limited access to the admin panel on Twitter was able to do so much damage because Twitter is a centralized server,” Agrawal said.

Agrawal doesn’t think the incident will have a huge impact on how lawmakers approach crypto.

“Even though maybe it’s been broadcast to more people than ever before, the kind of people who are watching it closely, like policymakers for example, see this and … they’re not surprised by the capability for this,” he said. “I hope that they see this, and they know that there’s nothing new here, there’s nothing to react to when it comes to Bitcoin policy.”

It remains to be seen whether the White House or senior administration officials decide to weigh in, but so far the response from lawmakers has been promising, said Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association.

See also: After the Twitter Hack, We Need a User-Owned Internet More Than Ever

She pointed to a tweet from Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) as one example, noting he explicitly said centralized control was the issue behind Twitter’s hack.

“I would say 99% of policymakers are not thinking about blockchain or cryptocurrency. And so anytime that you have national headlines that deal with a hack of this size and magnitude, and Bitcoin is sort of involved in the process, for the uneducated it’s a bad association because they then think that Bitcoin is sort of a preferred tool of criminals. Those of us that work in the industry and know it, study it, the policymakers who spent the time to learn about it, know that that’s not the case,” Smith said.

Wednesday’s hack may prove to be a teachable moment for the crypto-skeptics, she said. Blockchain analytic firms are already watching the address the scammer used, and exchanges have begun blacklisting it, preventing potential victims from sending any funds to the account.

Agrawal said he hopes there is a conversation about the potential benefits of using crypto, such as by Russian political activists or in trying to avoid currency freezes.

Read more: Russian Activists Use Bitcoin, and the Kremlin Doesn’t Like It

“We got lucky, because hackers have unprecedented access to a massively important system where so much damage [could have happened]. I mean, it’s mind numbing the amount of payoffs they could have caused in a few minutes. But instead they went for bitcoin,” he said.

Criminal opportunities

James Comer (R-Ky.), head of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, also sent a letter to Dorsey demanding the committee be briefed on everything from how quickly Twitter alerted the FBI to whether the hack was conducted by a foreign adversary. Comer, too, expressed concern over where direct messages were vulnerable.

“Twitter’s failure not only created an opportunity for criminals to perpetrate a crime broadcasted to millions of Twitter’s users, but the hackers’ potential breach of Twitter’s security poses broader risks regarding hackers’ access to private direct messages,” he said in the letter.

Senate Commerce Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) also sent Dorsey a letter, though it was less strident than Hawley’s. He said he was concerned about the potential for disinformation to be spread through such a hack, especially via high-profile accounts.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said in a statement shared with CoinDesk the hack could have had “major consequences” on elections, calling on Twitter to “get to the bottom of the hack and implement necessary safeguards” to prevent a repeat.

Read more: Twitter Hack: Chainalysis and CipherTrace Confirm FBI Investigation

On a local level, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed the state to conduct a full investigation into the hack.

“With more than 300 million users, Twitter is a primary source of news for many, making it a target for bad actors. This type of hack by con artists for financial gain can also be a tool of foreign actors and others to spread disinformation and – as we’ve witnessed – disrupt our elections,” said Cuomo in a statement.

The hack is likely to continue to ratchet up pressure on social media companies, which are already facing scrutiny over content moderation, disinformation and foreign interference.

Disclosure

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Image Credit: Refer to Source Author: Refer to Source Benjamin Powers

#News Updates #In the Aftermath of Hack #Lawmakers Blame Twitter #Not Bitcoin (www.blockcast.cc)

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coin-river-blog · 6 years

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The 2020 US presidential election is still nearly two years away, but campaign season is already in full swing. Before long, voters will know which Democrats support the Green New Deal and what mantra will replace Trump rally staple “Lock her up!” (assuming Hillary Clinton doesn’t run again, that is). Less prominent, though, are the candidates’ thoughts on bitcoin, positions which do not always sort out along party lines.

Will the 2020 US presidential election bring us the first crypto-investor-in-chief, or will the voters elect someone with no qualms about using the long arm of the executive branch to impose burdensome regulations on the nascent asset class? Read below to find out.

Note: While this list is not exhaustive — more than two dozen Democrats have either formally begun their campaigns or are considering running — it includes every major candidate, as well as others who have taken notable stances on bitcoin or blockchain technology. We will regularly update this list as candidates enter the race and/or update their opinions on cryptocurrency.

Democratic Candidates

Cory Booker

Like several other top Democratic candidates, Sen. Cory Booker does not appear to have directly addressed the subject of cryptocurrency. | Source: Shutterstock

Claim to Fame: Sitting Senator (New Jersey)

Campaign Status: Running

Crypto Stance: ???

Cory Booker sits on the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, but the junior senator from New Jersey has not revealed his thoughts on at least one innovative internet-native communications technology: bitcoin.

Tulsi Gabbard

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard invested in ethereum and litecoin toward the top of the crypto bubble. The real question, though, is how she feels about the asset class now. | Source: Flickr/AFGE1

Claim to Fame: Sitting Representative (Hawaii)

Campaign Status: Running

Crypto Stance: Invested

While Tulsi Gabbard has not revealed her formal stance on cryptocurrency, her public financial disclosures show that the representative from Hawaii invested in litecoin (LTC) and ethereum (ETC) toward the height of the crypto bubble. It is not clear whether she continues to hold these funds.

Kirsten Gillibrand

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced her 2020 US presidential campaign during an episode of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. | Source: Scott Kowalchyk / CBS / Handout via REUTERS

Claim to Fame: Sitting Senator (New York)

Campaign Status: Running

Crypto Stance: ???

Kirsten Gillibrand has not taken a public stance on bitcoin, not that it would necessarily matter much. Once a representative from a conservative New York district, her views have — to put it nicely — “evolved” since her 2009 appointment to the Senate and subsequent development of a national profile.

Kamala Harris

Sen. Kamala Harris is one of several high-profile presidential candidates who have not taken a public stance on bitcoin. | Source: Shutterstock

Claim to Fame: Sitting Senator (California)

Campaign Status: Running

Crypto Stance: ???

If Senator Kamala Harris has a strong position on cryptocurrency, she has yet to share it with the public.

Elizabeth Warren

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has expressed concern that the cryptocurrency boom-and-bust will disproportionately harm retail investors. | Source: Shutterstock

Claim to Fame: Sitting Senator (Massachusetts)

Campaign Status: Running

Crypto Stance: Critical

Senator Warren has been sharply critical of the state of the cryptocurrency industry, reiterating in several congressional hearings that she believes US regulators need to do more to oversee the nascent asset class and the harm it could do to retail investors.

youtube

“I’m worried about consumers getting hurt,” she told Yahoo in 2017 when asked for her opinion on bitcoin, arguing that when regulators take a back seat, it is American families who pay the price.

She has been particularly skeptical of initial coin offerings, which she said are often used to scam ordinary investors. “The challenge is how to nurture productive aspects of crypto with protecting consumers,” she said last October.

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang is a dark horse presidential candidate, but he’s already begun to make a name for himself within the cryptocurrency community. | Source: YouTube/Artificial Intelligence Channel

Claim to Fame: Entrepreneur

Campaign Status: Running

Crypto Stance: Bullish

Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign is a longshot, but it’s one that’s of particular interest to cryptocurrency fanatics since he announced that he would accept campaign donations denominated in bitcoin and ethereum (as well as ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens).

Republican Candidates

Donald Trump

Pres. Donald Trump has been uncharacteristically mute on the subject of cryptocurrency, but several current and former Trump administration officials have praised bitcoin. | Source: Shutterstock

Claim to Fame: Former reality TV star, sitting US President

Campaign Status: Running

Crypto Stance: ???

President Trump has not shared his thoughts on cryptocurrency. However, his administration includes several current and former senior members who are pro-bitcoin.

Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House Chief of Staff, praised bitcoin in 2016. Stating that the cryptocurrency was “not manipulatable by any government,” he compared it favorably to the US dollar, which he said had been “effectively devalued” by the Federal Reserve.

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon is also a crypto bull, revealing last year that he owned bitcoin and wanted to launch one or more utility tokens. “I’m working on some tokens now, utility tokens — potentially — for the populist movement on a worldwide basis,” he said, “but they’ve got to be quality.”

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Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who served on the Trump transition team, has repeatedly stated that he believes bitcoin is “digital gold” and has invested in several other blockchain projects, including EOS creator Block.one.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had less praise for bitcoin when he discussed the matter last January, though he didn’t go so far as to state that the government needed to impose more regulations on the industry. He said that the Treasury is “very focused” on cryptocurrency and wants to ensure that the technology does not become the new “Swiss bank account.” Similarly, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated in 2017 that the cryptocurrency industry is “being monitored” by the executive branch and that advisers had discussed it with Trump during an Oval Office meeting.

Notably, Donald Trump was also the first US president to sign an executive order explicitly mentioning cryptocurrency. That March 2018 order banned US citizens from buying the state-sponsored petro cryptocurrency created by Venezuela.

Republican Primary Challengers

As of this article’s latest update, no Republicans had announced their intention to challenge Donald Trump for the GOP’s 2020 presidential nomination. Nevertheless, Trump will likely face a primary challenge, however ill-fated.

Independent/Third-Party Candidates

John McAfee

John McAfee willingly made this video and posted it on his personal YouTube account. | Source: YouTube

Claim to Fame: Software engineer, ICO promoter

Campaign Status: Running (both for president and from the law)

Crypto Stance: High as a Kite

John McAfee is so bullish on cryptocurrency that he makes Fundstrat’s Tom Lee look like a bear. The septuagenarian has found a second career as an initial coin offering (ICO) promoter, and he has stated that he will “eat [his] d*ck on national television” if the bitcoin price does not reach $1 million by 2020.

Howard Schultz

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz might hop into the 2020 US presidential race as an independent. | Source: AP Photo / Elaine Thompson

Claim to Fame: Former CEO of Starbucks

Campaign Status: ‘Exploring’ a Run

Crypto Stance: Pro-blockchain, anti-bitcoin

The former Starbucks CEO believes blockchain is an important technology and that digital currency could represent the future of payments. However, he does not think that bitcoin or any other decentralized cryptocurrency has value.

“I don’t believe that bitcoin is going to be a currency today or in the future,” Schultz said in a January 2018 earnings call. “I’m talking about … the possibility of what could happen — not in the near term, but in a few years from now — with a consumer application in which there’s trust and legitimacy with regard to a digital currency.”

Last updated Feb. 2, 2019

Featured Image from AFP

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jobsearchtips02 · 4 years

Text

3 Individuals Charged in Twitter Hack

TwitterInc.’s worst-ever hack started months previously with a teenager on a telephone, according to an indictment filed Friday by federal authorities charging 3 males in connection with the episode.

The three were charged in connection with the July 15 hack, including a 17- year-old juvenile whom authorities have accused of masterminding the scam.

Graham Ivan Clark, of Tampa, Fla., was apprehended and charged as an adult Friday with orchestrating the hack that sent Twitter’s security group scrambling over numerous hours on a Wednesday afternoon two weeks ago. As the world viewed, prominent accounts, consisting of those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and

Apple

Inc., were taken over, one by one, to promote a cryptocurrency scam.

According to district attorneys, people familiar with the investigation and Twitter’s own account of the incident, the hack started with a phone conversation. The criminal activity, district attorneys stated, started more than 2 months before the prominent scam brought it to Twitter’s attention.

On Thursday, the microblogging company said that the hackers basically talked their method into the company’s computer network, calling up Twitter staff members and utilizing “social engineering” strategies to deceive workers into revealing details that they should not have actually shared.

They then learned delicate info about how Twitter runs and used that knowledge to gain access to other parts of the system, eventually getting the capability to prevent Twitter’s securities and reset the passwords of lots of user accounts.

In overall, 130 accounts were targeted. The hackers tweeted from 45, accessed the direct messages of 36 and downloaded the information from seven, Twitter has stated.

Mr. Clark began his work on burglarizing Twitter’s network on May 3– months before the high-profile hack, prosecutors declare.

In Between then and July 16, he offered access to Twitter accounts to brokers who would then find purchasers for them. Mr. Clark himself took over 17 prominent accounts, consisting of those of Bill Gates, Barack Obama and Mr. Musk, used them to make more than $100,000 promoting the bitcoin fraud, said Hillsborough County, Fla., State Lawyer Andrew Warren.

” This was refrained from doing on an impulse,” Mr. Warren stated in an interview. “This was an arranged, highly advanced attack and fraud that took 2 1/2 months of preparation and execution.”

The event was investigated by numerous law-enforcement agencies, consisting of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and local and worldwide firms, Mr. Warren said. That investigative full press led to the charges being submitted within 2 1/2 weeks, an incredibly short period of time, he said.

” We value the speedy actions of police in this examination,” Twitter said Friday.

The investigation is continuous, Mr. Warren said.

Likewise charged were Mason Sheppard, 19, of the U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, Fla., who the Justice Department described as brokers in the criminal activity. Both were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday.

The hackers all fulfilled in an online forum called OGUsers, where access to a variety of gaming, social media and other kinds of accounts are purchased and offered, detectives say.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal prior to his arrest, a British male who declared to use the same alias as Mr. Sheppard, “ever so anxious,” described himself as an OGUsers broker who thought that he was paying a Twitter employee for access to these accounts.

Earlier this month OGUsers had thousands of conversation threads providing to offer access to taken Twitter accounts, many of which were inactive.

Account-takeover professionals, such as those who congregate on OGUsers, have actually been running under the radar for years, accessing to accounts at gaming and social-media business and refining their abilities on telephone company, too, where they concentrate on a kind of telephone-number-takeover called SIM switching, said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at cyber-services business System 221 b.

” A great deal of these guys enter into online fraud at a really early age and the justice system is not equipped to make them stop what they are doing,” she stated.

Messrs. Clark and Fazeli were detained on Friday morning. They couldn’t immediately be grabbed remark.

High-profile Twitter accounts, consisting of those of Barack Obama and Elon Musk, were the target of an extensive attack that security specialists are calling the worst hacking occurrence in the company’s recent history. WSJ’s Euirim Choi reports on the hack, which looks various from other security breaches. Pictures: Robyn Beck/AFP through Getty Images, Sean Gallup/Getty Images and Dado Ruvic/Reuters (Originally published July 16, 2020).

The case shone a light on the security practices of a business that is dealing with pressure from numerous fronts. Earlier this year, activist investor Elliott Management Corp. pushed Twitter to discover a full-time president, which is run by Jack Dorsey, who also functions as chief executive of the payments company.

Square

Inc.

Twitter likewise has come under pressure from President Trump, who accused Twitter’s fact-checking system of censoring him after the business flagged some of his tweets about mail-in voting as needing a fact check.

After a series of security issues more than a years back, Twitter entered into an approval decree with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, promising to improve user-privacy securities.

Twitter hasn’t had a primary details security officer considering that December2019 The company has about one-tenth the employees of.

Facebook

Inc. and 5%the yearly earnings of its social-media rival. Twitter has 186 million everyday users, compared with Facebook’s nearly 2 billion.

After this latest hack, observers say there is still work for the business to do.

” It truly demonstrates that despite the advances in innovation and the controls to secure it, the human link is still the weakest link and often the most targeted,” stated Michael Coates, the president of Elevation Networks Inc., who was Twitter’s leading security executive till 2018.

— Jim Oberman added to this article.

Compose to Robert McMillan at [email protected]

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from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/3-individuals-charged-in-twitter-hack/

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todaysciencology · 4 years

Link

The hacking of 130 powerful people at once is unlikely to be the only common bitcoin scam behind it

At the end of this scandal that lasted for hours, what did the hackers get? One and a half million dollars!

Let's unravel the whole thing one by one.

At the end of the tweet, giving a fixed bitcoin account number to the person donating to it was a double amount from the celebrity.

The problem with Twitter is that it exceeds its capacity!

In 2019, the founder of Twitter's own account was hacked.

On the other hand, behind this hack is said to be the hand of a user named 'Plugwalks', who is estimated to be only 21 years old!

for more details kindly go to https://ift.tt/3bgFIf3 go to https://ift.tt/3bgFIf3 for more details

#science #technology #sciencology

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todaysciencology · 4 years

Quote

The hacking of 130 powerful people at once is unlikely to be the only common bitcoin scam behind it The former president of America, the most powerful country in the world, is likely to be the next president in the next four months. He and other contenders for the post, not only America, but the world's top billionaires, the founders of the world's top technology companies, the world's most valuable Company ... All these and a total of 130 people or companies like them, which can be said to run almost the whole world, all their Twitter accounts were hacked at once! At the end of this scandal that lasted for hours, what did the hackers get? One and a half million dollars! For the same reason, the bigger question now than how this scam on Twitter became possible is whether it is really possible to hack the accounts of the most powerful people in the world on such a large scale for just one and a half million dollars. Or is the whole scandal, and the potential damage it has caused, far deeper than it is now? Let's unravel the whole thing one by one. What really happened? Last week, for the first time in America's afternoon, almost identical tweets flowed from the top cryptocurrency-related accounts on Twitter (including @bitcoin), "We've joined hands with CryptoForHealth and are donating 5,000 to the Bitcoin community." There was also a link to a website (the website was blocked shortly after the news broke that Twitter had been hacked). Then from the hacked Twitter handles, to the addresses of different bitcoin wallets, to the cryptocurrency-related accounts, to the almost identical tweets from the accounts of various experts - someone said, "We want to help the world in the situation that has arisen since Kovid-19." If there was such a thing, someone would say, "We support Bitcoin, so do you." At the end of the tweet, giving a fixed bitcoin account number to the person donating to it was a double amount from the celebrity. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Alan Musk, Apple Company etc. are known to make massive donations for social purposes even under the most ordinary circumstances. Plus, all of these people have millions of followers on Twitter. As a result, even though the account was hacked by only 130 people, the 'appeal for donations' reverberated all over the world at once! Each had an offer to 'double the one' and it was said that this offer is only enough for the next 30 minutes! Realizing that something was amiss, Twitter took immediate action, hacked verified accounts were blocked, false tweets flowing from it were deleted, and then after a while everything was considered as normal. How did the hacking happen? Twitter also offers a two-step verification method that makes any online account more secure. Apparently, all the people whose accounts have been hacked are so powerful that the people who manage their accounts have given them two-step protection. One possibility is that SIM card swapping was also used in the hacking (in which OTP hackers get their own number by swapping a mobile company employee and swapping a certain number of SIMs). This hacking is unlikely to happen because the mobile numbers associated with the accounts of so many powerful people cannot be swapped at once. For many of these genuine people, instead of getting OTP on mobile, it is quite possible that authentication apps are considered more secure. Now the FBI has begun investigating the entire hacking scandal. According to Twitter, direct access to celebrity accounts was obtained by firing on one of its own employees. This seems to be the most likely thing (the account of the founder of Twitter himself has also been hacked). Trump's account was not hacked! Of particular note was the fact that the hacked accounts did not include the name of US President Donald Trump. One reason given is that his account has been given special protection in 2017 after his Twitter account was temporarily shut down by a Twitter employee. On the other hand, many people think that the presidential election planned in just four months is the reason for this. Before the US presidential election, Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal turned the minds and votes of American voters into a forcible, data-driven smart scandal, which led to the defeat of the supposedly victorious Hillary Clinton and the omnipotent Donald Trump. Russia is said to have used social media to change the outcome of the election. Is history repeating itself? With elections now being fought and won with the help of social media platforms, the weakness of such platforms is likely to worry the whole world. Why this explosion on Twitter? When it comes to social media, Twitter is nothing compared to giant Facebook. Facebook has 2.6 billion users, while Twitter has barely 0.33 billion users. But Facebook is mostly a platform to stay in touch with friends and relatives, while Twitter is different. Here is a gathering of world leaders. Top people from different parts of the world have become accustomed to tweeting words on Twitter and gradually the influence of Twitter has spread tremendously on the media, stockmarkets and politics. The president of the United States sometimes chooses to announce a new policy on Twitter. Many of the world's big news first break on Twitter. The CEOs of big companies make announcements about their business on Twitter and this has caused a lot of turmoil in the stock markets. That's why 130 celebrity accounts are being hacked on Twitter for just-1.5 million. If the hackers had assumed that the stock markets would be in turmoil, countries like the US and Korea could have made fake tweets from the hacked accounts that were on the verge of a nuclear war. On the other hand, Twitter has remained silent on a very important question. Private direct messaging can also take place between different accounts, just like public tweets on Twitter. It is quite possible that all these celebrities are exchanging such direct messages inside and with other important people. Have hackers got all this data? If so, we can say for sure that the real picture is yet to come on Twitter or Twitter! Why is Twitter an easy target? There are very few Twitter users compared to Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, but their reach is overwhelming. The world's top politicians, business tycoons, movie-sports celebrities and journalists are the most active on Twitter. If a person with millions of followers on Twitter tweets anything, it will spread all over the world again at a tremendous speed. Because of this, hackers also get a 'kick' in hacking Twitter accounts. Hackers who have a blue tick on Twitter, that is, a verified account, hacking the accounts of 'powerful' people are looked upon with respect. The problem with Twitter is that it exceeds its capacity! The market value of a company like Facebook is twenty times higher than Twitter. Obviously, Twitter doesn't have as many resources as Facebook to secure its platform. Facebook has 48,000 team members worldwide, while Twitter has barely 5,100 team members worldwide. In 2019, the founder of Twitter's own account was hacked. A few days before this hack ... The most commonly used technique for hacking social media accounts is called 'SIM swapping', which involves intercepting an OTP by going to the target's mobile or e-mail by breaking into a mobile phone company or social media company's employee. A few days before the massive hacking of Twitter, a user named 'Chevon' on a platform of people known as 'Ozyusers' (i.e. original gangsters!) And engaged in account hijacking, gave an e-mail to any Twitter account for just 250 250. Posted an offer to change the mail address. He also said that he would do the job for two to three thousand dollars if he wanted direct access to any Twitter account without falling into such a trap. On the other hand, behind this hack is said to be the hand of a user named 'Plugwalks', who is estimated to be only 21 years old! for more details kindly go to https://ift.tt/3bgFIf3 go to https://ift.tt/3bgFIf3

http://todaysciencology.blogspot.com/2020/07/hacking-of-most-powerful-people-in.html