#RSAC: The Security Risks of Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency, most notably Bitcoin, has become increasingly popular and valuable in recent years and with it have come a number of associated security risks, according to a pair of security experts speaking at the 2021 RSA Conference on May 19.

Kenneth Geers, external communications analyst at Very Good Security, used the first part of the presentation to explain the history of money and why the US dollar has emerged as the world's dominant reserve currency.

"Good money is scarce, authentic, durable, portable and stable," Geers said. "If digital currency is to survive, thrive and reach its potential, it should have the exact same traits."

Risks from Mining Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are generated by a process known as mining.

Kathy Wang, CISO at Very Good Security, explained that essentially what miners are doing is trying to be the first to come up with a solution to a puzzle. That puzzle is a cryptographic hashing algorithm that a computer system, the miner, is trying to solve. Cryptocurrency mining today requires vast amounts of computing power, which has led to different types of cybersecurity risks.

Miners are very resourceful, they're very financially motivated, and some of them are attacking and compromising internet-facing computers to gain control of large numbers of resources to conduct mining activities.Kathy Wang

One risk comes from miners that attempt to abuse free resources on the internet provided by cloud and application service providers. Wang explained that what the miners might do is create many free accounts on these cloud infrastructures and get a good deal of computing power, at the ex ..

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