It is Time for Blockchain to Embrace the Level of Security Its Users Deserve — Security Today
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It is Time for Blockchain to Embrace the Level of Security Its Users Deserve
Blockchain technology was built in part on a principle of high-level security, but it is increasingly clear that this is not always the case, as noted by a recent DARPA analysis noting how cryptocurrency tech is vulnerable to tampering.
Under this backdrop, it is time for blockchain providers — which extend well beyond the realms of cryptocurrency and NFTs – to give their users the level of security they deserve and, in some cases, thought they already had.
How Blockchain Security Got to Where It Is
From a hacker’s perspective, crypto is proving to be a gold mine. The latest trend for hackers is targeting blockchain “bridges,” which are tools used to transfer tokens between blockchains. Through the first seven months of 2022 alone, more than $1 billion has been stolen from these blockchain bridges.
In many cases, these breaches are a result of key mismanagement. When you give power to people, which blockchain does on the surface, it gives them a certain amount of freedom but it also comes with responsibility. Even if an organization’s security fundamentals are solid, for example, malicious actors can still perform user-level trickery and fool users into signing away things or giving up private keys. It is not so much that there are problems at the root of blockchain as a technology, it is just that it has created an environment where individuals who aren’t sophisticated when it comes to security find themselves in control of high-value things and become targets of sophisticated hackers.
The gap that needs to be filled is not building new protocols but rather adding more controls at the user level. This will vary depending on the size of an organization, but there could be five levels of approvals – a transaction of a certain size might require sign-off from multiple people in separate locations. Ethereum has dapps, which brings a level of programmability to the platform, but they’ve also created trouble where people don’t know which apps they are authorizing or what they are signing.
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