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House Democrats Are Using End-To-End Encryption To Avoid Future Hacks – ABC2 News

Posted on July 19, 2017 by admin

After being hit with a cyberattack in 2016, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wants to be hack-proof. To do that, it's turning to a new messenger with end-to-end encryption.

Back in June, theDCCC migrated toencrypted messaging service Wickr, which is now the primary method of communication in the office. It's the first political committee to make the shift to end-to-end encryption.

Outside of the office, Wickr does not replace email.

End-to-end encryption services work by usingcryptographic keysthat can only be decoded and deciphered by message recipients.Wickr works byencrypting not just the messages, but also the keys themselves. Thisadded layer of encryptionkeeps communication as secure as possible.

SEE MORE: Obama Tells SXSW: Don't Be 'Absolutist' On Encryption

Some sayend-to-end encryption could help secure future political campaigns, but other offices and political figures aren't taking so kindly to the idea.

Back in July, theDCCC sent a letterto the National Republican Congressional Committee about cybersecurity. The letter called for combined non-partisan efforts to protect against future attacks. But Steve Stivers, chair of the NRCC, dismissed it as a"political stunt."

Attacking encryption has become a bipartisan effort. Last spring, Republican Sen. Richard Burr and Democratic Sen. DianneFeinstein introducedlegislation thatorders tech companiesto decrypt messages sent by terrorist groups and criminals.

The legislation was written in response toApple's refusalto help the FBI hack the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. But months later,Reuters reportedFeinstein and Burr's bill to be dead.

Governments outside of the U.S., however, have called for similar anti-encryption efforts. In response to the attacks on London Bridge, the U.K. parliament passed the "Snooper's Bill," which gives law enforcement authorities unprecedented access to web-browsing histories and data.

Earlier in July, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull alsosupported legislationthat would obligate internet companies like Facebook to comply with law enforcement.

In regards to fears that the policy wouldn't be technically feasible, Turnbull said: "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only laws that apply in Australia is the law of Australia."

One of the mainissues regarding decryption or creating a "back door" for government and law enforcement officials is that it opens the door for any hacker to intercept communications.

In other words, it would make end-to-end encryption functionally useless.

Overnight Cybersecurity: Dem campaign arm embraces encryption … – The Hill

Posted on July 19, 2017 by admin

Welcome to OVERNIGHT CYBERSECURITY, your daily rundown of the biggest news in the world of hacking and data privacy. We're here to connect the dots as leaders in government, policy and industry try to counter the rise in cyber threats. What lies ahead for Congress, the administration and the latest company under siege? Whether you're a consumer, a techie or a D.C. lifer, we're here to give you ...

THE BIG STORIES:

--DEMS DOCRYPTOGRAPHICCYBERCOMMUNICATIONS: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has taken to using an encrypted messaging app called Wickr for internal communications and correspondence with the campaigns of the most vulnerable House Democrats, BuzzFeed News reported Tuesday. The DCCC was among the organizations targeted by a Russian hacking campaign during the 2016 elections -- an attack that exposed the internal documents of a handful of Democratic House campaigns. Wickr, an end-to-end encrypted messaging software, was installed at the DCCC in June, according to BuzzFeed, and is a first for political party committees on both sides of the aisle. Encrypted messaging systems prevent third parties from deciphering communications and data sent using that software, meaning that only the sender and the intended recipient can view the information. Wickr is not intended to replace email and is used to send ephemeral messages and share files.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

--DEMS ANXIOUS ABOUT PULLING RUSSIAN SANCTIONS BILL OVER FINISH LINE: The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee expressed pessimism on Tuesday that long-stalled Russia sanctions legislation could get done before lawmakers leave Washington for August. The bipartisan bill passed in the Senate last month by a 98-2 vote, but it has since been stuck in the House due to multiple procedural problems. The Senate subsequently approved technical changes by unanimous consent three weeks ago. But House Democrats then objected to a provision that prevents them from forcing a floor vote to block the Trump administration if it tries to lift sanctions. And on Friday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested that the package, which also slaps sanctions on Iran, include a bill passed by the House earlier this year to sanction North Korea. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs panel, appeared skeptical that the sanctions package could be sent to President Trump's desk before the House is scheduled to leave for the month long August recess at the end of next week. "I would hope. But every day passes and nothing is getting done, it makes it less and less likely. But that's not our fault. That's the Republicans' fault," Engel told The Hill. Engel added that he thinks adding North Korea sanctions will make it harder to resolve the already-complicated talks to move the package. "It makes no sense to me to have a North Korea sanctions bill thrown into the mix when we apparently can't even agree on a Russia-Iran sanctions bill," Engel said.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

A POLICY UPDATE:

HOUSE VOTES TO FUND DHS CYBER OFFICE; SLASHES FUNDING FOR RESEARCH:

House lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a spending measure that would provide roughly $1.8 billion in funding for a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cyber unit.

The bill would allocate the money for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), the DHS office tasked with securing critical infrastructure from cyber threats.

The House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal 2018 funding measure for the DHS by a vote of 30-22 during a markup on Tuesday.

The allocation for NPPD is similar to fiscal 2017 spending levels and on par with the Trump administration's request for $1.8 billion in discretionary funding for the office.

NPPD, which is charged with protecting U.S. cyber and physical infrastructure, would receive nearly $1.4 billion to help secure civilian networks, prevent cyberattacks and espionage, and help modernize emergency communications infrastructure.

However, the bill would cut funds to the DHS's Science and Technology Directorate by more than $100 million, reducing its budget to $638 million and putting it in line with President Trump's budget request. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) took issue with that cut on Tuesday.

"We are drastically cutting the important cybersecurity and research and development work that happens at the Science and Technology Directorate and shifting that money to fund a border wall," said Ruppersberger.

"The president may have promised a border wall, but I explicitly remember him saying Mexico would pay for it, not saying he would gut the important research and development work at the Department of Homeland Security to fund it," he continued.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

A LIGHTER CLICK:

EARLY FAKE NEWS."Goodnight Moon"is not scientifically accurate.

WHAT'S IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

MORE LIKE WHATSOUT:

WhatsApp users in China are reporting that the app isn't properly working across the country, sparking concerns that the Chinese government is censoring the encrypted messaging app.

Many users on the app in China have not been able to send videos, pictures and, in some cases, even texts, reports The New York Times. One Beijing-based reporter tweeted that the app had not been working since Sunday and could only be used with the help of a VPN.

Security groups reportedly confirmed that WhatsApp was being disrupted by government internet filters.

"According to the analysis that we ran today on WhatsApp's infrastructure, it seems that the Great Firewall is imposing censorship that selectively targets WhatsApp functionalities," Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, a cryptography research startup, said to the Times.

Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp, are both already blocked by Chinese government censors.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

LETTERS APLENTY:

DEMS PUSH TO UPDATE PIPELINE CYBERSECURITY:

Sen. Maria CantwellMaria CantwellOvernight Cybersecurity: Dem campaign arm embraces encryption | Panel signs off on .8B for DHS cyber office | Dems want review of pipeline security Dems call for review of pipeline cybersecurity rules 2 national monuments safe from Trump administrations review MORE (D-Wash.) and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) asked the Government Accountability Office and Transportation Security Administration on Tuesday whether voluntary guidelines for cybersecurity defenses for fuel pipelines need to be updated or codified.

"An assessment of these guidelines and their effectiveness is needed as a number of major trends have emerged, with potentially significant implications for our energy, national and economic security," the lawmakers wrote in a letter.

Cantwell and Pallone are the ranking members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee, respectively.

In the letter, they note that the same type of cybersecurity standards legislation protecting the energy grid is not in place for pipelines delivering natural gas and oil despite pipelines' dependence on the same types of internet-connected systems.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

WYDEN ASKS DHS TO HELP STOP FAKE GOVERNMENT EMAILS:

A Democratic senator is pressing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to mandate the government-wide use of an email authentication tool "to ensure that hackers cannot send emails that impersonate federal agencies."

"I write to ask you to take immediate steps to ensure that hackers cannot send emails that impersonate federal agencies," Wyden wrote on Tuesday to Jeannette Manfra, the DHS official. "The threat posed by criminals and foreign governments impersonating U.S. government agencies is real."

Wyden asked DHS to require agencies to use a tool called the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, or DMARC, a standard developed by industry that can reroute emails that fake the sender's address to the spam folder or have them outright rejected.

Without DMARC or another authentication method, there is nothing that prevents a sender from putting whatever email address they would like in the "from" field.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

Apple flies in top executives to lobby Turnbull government on encryption laws – The Sydney Morning Herald

Posted on July 19, 2017 by admin

Apple's top privacy executives have flown out to Australia twice in the past month to lobby the Turnbull government over looming changes to laws that govern access to encrypted messages.

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The government wants to work with tech companies to ensure police and security officials can access the encrypted messages of criminals and terrorists.

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The government wants to work with tech companies to ensure police and security officials can access the encrypted messages of criminals and terrorists.

The global technologygiant, which is on track to become the world's first trillion-dollar company, met with Attorney-General George Brandis and senior staffin Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's office on Tuesdayto discuss the company's concerns about the legal changes, which could see tech companies compelled to provide access to locked phones and third party messaging applications.

Apple has arguedin the meetingsthat as a starting point it does not wantthe updated laws to block tech companies fromusingencryption on their devices, nor for companies to have to provide decryption keys to allow access to secure communications.

The company has argued that if it is compelled to provide a software "back door" into its phonesto help law enforcement agencies catch criminals and terrorists, this would reduce the security for all users. It also says it has provided significant assistance to police agencies engaged in investigations, when asked.

Apple famously refused to comply with a request by the FBI to unlock the phone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardinoterrorist attack in 2016, drawing criticism from law enforcement agencies and praise from privacy advocates.

While the Turnbull government is preparing new legislation to introduce by the end of the year, it is not yet clear howit wants tech companies to facilitate access to secure devices such as phones.

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The laws will be modelled on those introduced in Britain about a year ago and the government saysit will update and enhance the obligations on tech companies that make phones and secure messaging applications such as WhatsApp to provide assistance to police and spyagencies when requested, subject to a warrant.

Just how this greater access to, for example, locked devices and encrypted messages can technically be achieved is not clear and this, in part, was the purpose of the government-Apple meeting.

A source familiar with the discussions between Turnbull government representatives and Apple saidthe company was effectivelytrying tominimise the amount ofadditional regulation and legal obligation that would be placed on it and other tech companies to hand over or facilitate access to secure information.

Another source familiar with the discussions said both sides were taking a collaborative approach, and that the Turnbull government had explicitly said it did not want agovernmentback door into people's phones, or to weaken encryption.

Last week, Senator Brandis said the government wouldwork with companies such as Apple to faciliate greater access to secure communications but warned that"we'll also ensure that the appropriate legal powers, if need be, as a last resort, coercive powers of the kind that recently were introduced into the United Kingdom under the Investigatory Powers Act...are available to Australian intelligence and law enforcement authorities as well".

The Prime Minister has been pushing for tech companies to work more closely with government and not allow "ungoverned spaces" to flourish online, and to allow easier access to encrypted information on phones and in the cloud, subject to a warrant.

Mr Turnbull has saidtech companies such as Apple and Facebook "have to face up to their responsibility. They can't just wash their hands of it and say: 'It's got nothing to do with us'."

At the G20he played a key role in drafting a section of the leaders' final statementon encryption that emphasised the law had to apply online, just as it did elsewhere.

The paragraph promised, in part, that "in line with the expectations of our peoples, we also encourage collaboration with industry to provide lawful and non-arbitrary access to available information where access is necessary for the protection of national security against terrorist threats".

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Apple flies in top executives to lobby Turnbull government on encryption laws - The Sydney Morning Herald

$20 antennas can now help breach 256-bit encryption standards – Digital Trends

Posted on July 19, 2017 by admin

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Why it matters to you

This technique shows hackers don't need bottomless wallets or even direct access to a system to breach heavy encryption.

Security researchers have devised a method of defeating AES-256bit encryption in as little as five minutes, and most importantly, you dont need an expensive supercomputer to do it. The technique leverages radio hardware to measure the frequency changes in the magnetic field generated during encryption to record and decode the information from a distance.

Manufacturing and digital security often have the project management triangle in common. Defeating security and breaching encryption can rarely be done fast, well and without significant cost. But what this Fox-IT technique achieves is very close to that ideal, offering the ability to crack even complex AES-256bit encryption in a few minutes with relatively cheap, off-the-shelf hardware.

Although using more-expensive radio recording hardware can yield better results, the technique is capable of cracking software encryption using just a $25 USB stick and a small wire loop antenna.

By measuring the power output of the encrypting system, the snoopers can tell when an algorithm is receiving input data and later outputting it in an encrypted form. With a mixture of guesswork and correlation, the researchers are able to take that and begin to decode the AES algorithm. By attempting to figure out what the correct value (of 256 options) for each of the 32 bytes is, only 8,192 guesses must be made.

If you were to attempt to brute force hack the encrypted message itself, youd be making an impossible number of guesses (two, to the power of 256). This technique makes the impossible not only viablebut easy.

Better yet, the technique doesnt require direct access to the encrypting hardware. The researchers were able to perform the technique from up to a meter away.

That was technically only possible because of ideal testing conditions though. In reality, the most even those with high-end equipment could expect to conduct such an attack is from 30 centimeters away. Still, being able to make such an attack from a distance with cheap hardware highlights the potential for new attack vectors against typically near-foolproof encryption systems.

Although breaking open someones obfuscated files is almost always going to be easier if you extract the decryption key from the owner, this system offers a new way for all sorts of organizations and individuals to target it. In turn, this should lead to better shielding for protected hardware in the future.

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$20 antennas can now help breach 256-bit encryption standards - Digital Trends

Dev to El Reg: Making web pages pretty is harder than building crypto – The Register

Posted on July 18, 2017 by admin

+Comment An Australian computer scientist working in Thailand has offered his contribution to Australia's cryptography debate by creating a public-key crypto demonstrator in less than a day, using public APIs and JavaScript.

Brandis.io not a useful encryption implementation (the site itself says as much), but is a useful public education exercise.

By using the WebCryptoAPI, author Dr Peter Kelly has implemented end-to-end crypto in just 445 lines of JavaScript code.

As Kelly writes at GitHub, Brandis does not implement encryption itself; instead, it relies on the Web Cryptography API provided by your browser, and simply exposes a user interface to this API that enables its use by non-programmers.

Hence its smallness: the cryptography is already out there, in the form of straightforward calls to public APIs: there's more JavaScript devoted to screen furniture than to generating public and private keys, or encrypting/decrypting the messages.

Dr Kelly's Brandis.io crypto demonstrator

As Kelly told Vulture South: I spent way more time on [the presentation] than I did on the crypto-using code. Picking a colour scheme took longer than writing the code for generating a public/private key pair.

Kelly warns visitors to the site not to treat this as a messaging platform: Brandis is primarily intended as a demonstration; it was put together in less than a day. For real-world usage, we recommend more established software such as GnuPG.

By the way, if you decide to try Brandis.io, note that its current message size limit is 190 characters. Kelly's investigating why that's so.

+Comment: Vulture South notes that kelly's efforts only addresses one part of the debate the Australian government ignited when its Attorney-General George Brandis fired the latest shot in what's being colloquially called CryptoWars 2. The other half is device security.

A common critique levelled at those who resist the idea of governments undermining encryption (the so-called war on mathematics, highlighted when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull unhelpfully quipped that Australia's laws will prevail over he laws of mathematics) is that they've got the wrong end of the stick, because messages could be recovered by means that don't attack encrypted messages in transit, but rather while they're at rest for example, by recovering messages as stored on devices like iPhones or Androids.

First, it's worth keeping in mind that the government itself drew attention towards strong encryption, with its complaint that singled out specific end-to-end encrypted applications, and its promise to get platform-makers to co-operate (as well as device vendors).

More importantly, however, the argument that an endpoint compromise is okay ignores history. Whether it's the sloppy IoT security let the Mirai botnet hose big servers or the leaked NSA tools that let loose ransomware rampages, or the DNS Changer malware attack that began in 2006, there's ample evidence of the danger posed by insecure endpoints.

You can't have security if you have insecure endpoints was first expressed to this writer in the 1990s, and it's still true. We can't redirect concerns about weak cryptography by saying you can still have strong crypto, if vendors will make weak devices.

Even the NSA couldn't keep device exploits secret, after all.

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Dev to El Reg: Making web pages pretty is harder than building crypto - The Register

A brief history of GnuPG: vital to online security but free and … – Computerworld Australia

Posted on July 18, 2017 by admin

Most people have never heard of the software that makes up the machinery of the internet. Outside developer circles, its authors receive little reward for their efforts, in terms of either money or public recognition.

One example is the encryption software GNU Privacy Guard (also known as GnuPG and GPG), and its authors are regularly forced to fundraise to continue the project.

GnuPG is part of the GNU collection of free and open source software, but its story is an interesting one, and it begins with software engineer Phil Zimmermann.

We do not know exactly what Zimmermann felt on January 11, 1996, but relief is probably a good guess. The United States government had just ended its investigation into him and his encryption software, PGP or Pretty Good Privacy.

In the 1990s, the US restricted the export of strong cryptography, viewing it as sensitive technology that had once been the exclusive purview of the intelligence and military establishment. Zimmermann had been facing serious punishment for posting PGP on the internet in 1991, which could have been seen as a violation of the Arms Export Control Act.

To circumvent US export regulations and ship the software legally to other countries, hackers even printed the source code as a book, which would allow anyone to scan it at its destination and rebuild the software from scratch.

Zimmermann later worked with the PGP Corporation, which helped define PGP as an open internet standard, OpenPGP. A number of software packages implement this standard, of which GnuPG is perhaps the best-known.

PGP implements a form of cryptography that is known as asymmetric cryptography or public-key cryptography.

The story of its discovery is itself worth telling. It was invented in the 1970s by researchers at the British intelligence service GCHQ and then again by Stanford University academics in the US, although GCHQs results were only declassified in 1997.

Asymmetric cryptography gives users two keys. The so-called public key is meant to be distributed to everyone and is used to encrypt messages or verify a signature. The private or secret key must be known only to the user. It helps decrypt messages or sign them - the digital equivalent of a seal to prove origin and authenticity.

Zimmermann published PGP because he believed that everybody has a right to private communication. PGP was meant to be used for email, but could be used for any kind of electronic communication.

Despite Zimmermanns work, the dream of free encryption for everyone never quite came to full bloom.

Neither Zimmermanns original PGP nor the later GnuPG managed to become entirely user-friendly. Both use highly technical language, and the latter is still known for being accessible only by typing out commands - an anachronism even in the late 1990s, when most operating systems already used the mouse.

Many users did not understand why they should encrypt their email at all, and attempts to integrate the tools with email clients were not particularly intuitive.

Big corporations such as Microsoft, Google and Apple shunned it to this day, they do not ship PGP with their products, although some are now implementing forms of end-to-end encryption.

Finally, there was the issue of distributing public keys - they had to be made available to other people to be useful. Private initiatives never gathered much attention. In fact, a number of academic studies in the early and late 2000s showed that these attempts never managed to attract widespread public usage.

The release of the Edward Snowden documents in 2013 spurred renewed interest in PGP. Crypto parties became a global phenomenon when people met in person to exchange their public keys, but this was ultimately short-lived.

When I met Zimmermann in Silicon Valley in 2015, he admitted that he did not currently use PGP. In a more recent email, he said this is because it does not run on current versions of macOS or iOS. I may soon run GnuPG, he wrote.

By todays standards, GnuPG like all implementations of OpenPGP lacks additional security features that are provided by chat apps such as WhatsApp or Signal. Both are spiritual descendants of PGP and unthinkable without Zimmermanns invention, but they go beyond what OpenPGP can do by protecting messages even in the case of a private key being lost.

Whats more, email reveals the sender and receiver names anyway. In the age of data mining, this is often enough to infer the contents of encrypted communication.

Nevertheless, GnuPG (and hence OpenPGP) is alive and well. Relative to the increased computational power available today, their cryptography is as strong today as it was in 1991. GnuPG just found new use cases - very important ones.

Journalists use it to allow their sources to deposit confidential data and leaks. This is a vital and indispensable method of self-protection for the leaker and the journalist.

But even more importantly, digital signatures are where GnuPG excels today.

Linux is one of the worlds most common operating system (it even forms the basis of Android). On internet servers that run Linux, software is downloaded and updated from software repositories - and most of them sign their software with GnuPG to confirm its authenticity and origin.

GnuPG works its magic behind closed curtains, once again.

Ralph HolzisLecturer in Networks and Security at theUniversity of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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A brief history of GnuPG: vital to online security but free and ... - Computerworld Australia

Twitter Still Refusing To Verify Accounts For Julian Assange And Other Gov’t Critics – Mintpress News (blog)

Posted on July 18, 2017 by admin

Verified Twitter accounts are impervious to impostors and others who would seek to discredit the accounts owners. But Julian Assange and other well-known government critics are still unverified, leading to speculation that Twitter is purposefully allowing their accounts to remain vulnerable.

In defiance of its own verification policy, Twitter still wont verify Julian Assanges account.

MINNEAPOLIS Despite claiming that it authenticates accounts that are determined to be an account of public interest, Twitter has continuously refused to authenticate the accounts of some well-known public figures, particularly those who push against mainstream and government narratives.

The most well-known victim of Twitters essential weaponization of its account verification policy is Julian Assange, founder of the publishing organization WikiLeaks. Assanges Twitter account, @JulianAssange, has been confirmed by WikiLeaks as his authentic personal account, a fact Twitter itself even acknowledged when it referenced the authentic Assange account in its own writings.

Assange has attempted to have his account verified since last October, but has repeatedly had his authentication request denied, despite Twitters unofficial admission that they know that @JulianAssange is the authentic account. Twitter has refused to issue a public statement as to why Assanges account remains unverified.

While the verified account situation may seem minuscule compared to other issues that Assange currently faces, it has still had negative consequences nonetheless. The lack of verification on Assanges account, in particular, has led to the proliferation of a slew of fake Assange accounts. As journalist Caitlin Johnstone notes, these fake accounts are commonly mistaken by casual social media users as being Assanges real account due to the lack of verification.

Not only that, but some of the fake accounts actively post on popular tweets, claiming to be the real Assange and causing further confusion while also discrediting Assange. Many of those accounts have been reported, but Twitter has not taken any action against them. Not only that, but the lack of verification makes it more difficult for Assange to get his opinions to a wider audience, as the lack of verification makes it difficult for him to amass followers.

While Assange is certainly the most prominent public figure to be repeatedly denied account verification, he is not alone. Former U.S. Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has also spoken out regarding Twitters refusal to verify her account. McKinney is a well-known critic of U.S. imperialism and war propaganda, as well as a prominent voice in the 9/11 Truth Movement. She has over 25,000 Twitter followers.

Twitter has turned its authentication of popular accounts into a weapon, allowing it limit the Twitter presence of those who do not toe the establishment line. Twitter does not treat pundits from MSNBC or Fox News the same way it treats Assange and McKinney, making it clear that this is a politically-biased stance on the part of the social network.

However, this is by no means the first time that Twitter has come under fire for discriminating against popular users over their political leanings. Twitters launch last year of the Twitter Trust and Safety Council came complete with a group known as the Dangerous Speech Project that shares ties with the liberal John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as George Soros Open Society Institute. Not a single conservative-leaning group is found on the council, which includes over 40 member groups.

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Twitter Still Refusing To Verify Accounts For Julian Assange And Other Gov't Critics - Mintpress News (blog)

Cryptocurrency Hit Record Low Values Over the Weekend – Futurism

Posted on July 18, 2017 by admin

In BriefCryptocurrencies fell over the weekend, reaching record lowsand loosing billions in market cap. While they've since recoveredthe losses, it shows just how unpredictable the cryptocurrencymarket truly is. Cryptos Rise (& Fall)

Over the weekend, cryptocurrencies suffered one of the most severe decreases in value in history when their market cap fell from a record high of $116 billion in June to $60 billion on Sunday July 17. Early this week, themarket has started to rise again, but the plummet will not soon be forgotten:throughout the day on Sunday, Bitcoin dropped from over $2,000 to as low as $1,758.20, and Ether fell 20percent to $130.26.Click to View Full Infographic

As of Tuesday morning, it seems thedownward trend has ended, with all major cryptocurrencies reporting rising rates again: Bitcoin is back over $2,000 once more, with Coin Market Cap reporting the currency is now trading at $2,307 (9:00 EST), while Ether has risen from a low over the weekend to a current value of $196.58. The total market cap has regained losses of around $10 billion,according to Coindesk.

Despite the improvement, however, cryptocurrencies are a long way off the meteoric successes they enjoyed in June, where they saw a market cap as high as $116 billion. Since then, Bitcoin has lost around 30 percent of its value, with its highpoint being $3,000 in contrast to todays figure of roughly $2,000. Ethereum has suffered even more severely, dropping from $395 to $164. Despite these falls, 2017 remains a record breaking year for cryptocurrency overall.

There have been, according to Venture Beat, three main reasons for the 48 hour cryptocurrency flop.

First, the bitcoin civil war that seems imminent as of August 1st when the Bitcoin improvement proposal 148 is set to activate. For one, theproposal concerns the possibility of increasing the cryptocurrencysblock size, (a decision which has divided miners and investors).At any rate, and regardless of the eventual decision, the uncertainty right now has caused many investors to liquidate their virtual assets.

Second, a flurry of startups have chosen to get out of the game afterprofitable rounds of investment derived from initial coin offerings (ICOs). Two particularly striking examples are EOS: after raising $200 million worth of Ether earlier this month, they have been offloading it to Bitfinex and TenX, which raised 200,000 ETH ($67 million at the time) in its token sale 30 percent of which has already been sold. This contributes to uncertainty and danger in the marketplace, which can precipitatedecreasing value.

Third, the presence of amateur sellers that the bitcoin market attracts through its fundamental lack of regulation and policing can have a multiplier effect on every market movement, namely throughfrantic, if not occasionally panicked, buying and selling practices.

While the ultimate success of cryptocurrencies remains speculative, one thing we know for sure after observingtheir activity over the last few days is that financial currencies remain volatile and prone to unpredictability.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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Cryptocurrency Hit Record Low Values Over the Weekend - Futurism

Trading Cryptocurrency the eToro Way – newsBTC

Posted on July 18, 2017 by admin

Digital currencies are decentralized, peer to peer currencies that are not influenced by the actions of governments or central banks. They run on open source platforms, and can be traded against fiat currencies, or as funds, at leading trading platforms. Blockchain technology has revolutionized e-commerce and financial services, and more banks are adopting this dynamic technology to process financial transactions.

Digital currencies have come a long way since inception after the global financial crisis of 2008/2009. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, an individual, or group of individuals, who have since disappeared from the scene. Their legacy remains however, with a myriad of digital currencies now available on the market. These include Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum and hundreds of others which are rapidly garnering the attention of e-commerce retailers, traders, banks, financial institutions, and even regulatory authorities around the world.

One of the worlds premier financial trading platforms, eToro has launched a CryptoFund. This fund tracks the activity of cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and others. The precise asset allocation in the CryptoFund is as follows:

The bulk of the CryptoFund 84% is comprised of Bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum. In June, the fund tracked negatively with losses of 4.65%, followed by month-to-date declines in July of 25.64%. The eToro CryptoFund is a trading option, meaning that registered clients can benefit from price movements in the fund regardless of direction. At eToro, there are currently over $300,000 worth of assets under management (daily reading) with the CryptoFund, with hundreds of traders.

Since this is a CopyFund, it is possible to follow successful traders, copy their trades and profit accordingly. The increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies is a result of several factors, notably their increasing adoption in e-commerce, their rarity, and the anonymity that is afforded to traders. Compared to fiat currency which is completely controlled by governments and central banks, cryptocurrency offers multiple trading opportunities. This fund has a market capitalization of at least $1 billion with monthly trading volumes in excess of $20 million.

eToro management carefully monitors the individual components of the fund and if any of them dips beneath $1 billion, or if trading volumes are less than $20 million, a currency could be dropped from the fund. The cryptocurrency with the highest market capitalization is Bitcoin at $40 billion, but others like Ethereum and Litecoin also have high market capitalizations. The precise weighting assigned to individual currencies in the fund is determined by the portfolio manager at eToro.

The Crypto Copyfund is traded as a CFD (contract for difference) which is a derivative trading instrument. eToro management protects traders with the limits imposed on the daily trading activity of the CryptoFund. If the limit is exceeded, the funds trading activity will be closed for the day. This is done to maintain stability in trading activity, much like the major indices on Wall Street.

eToro is a strictly regulated financial trading enterprise. Only traders from accepted jurisdictions can register, deposit, and trade cryptocurrency online. In the United Kingdom, eToro is registered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and operates under the name eToro UK. The minimum required deposit is $5,000, and clients are required to be UK residents.

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Trading Cryptocurrency the eToro Way - newsBTC

Steep decline in cryptocurrency market has miners dumping their … – PC Gamer

Posted on July 18, 2017 by admin

Ethereum, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, is becoming more difficult to mine. At the same time, volatility is rearing its welcome head, and the value of Ethereum is now less than half of what it was around a month ago. As a result, profitability is way down, and some miners are putting their GPUs up for sale on second-hand sites such as Ebay, CoinDesk reports.

While it is difficult to predict anything when it comes to cryptocurrencies, we are cautiously optimistic that GPU pricing should start trending back to normal in the coming weeks. That could change at the drop of the hat, of course, but with the way things are now, miners are less motivated to stock up on GPUs and mine Ethereum.

That was not the case a month ago when Ethereum reached an all-time high of $300 before recording another high of more than $400 a short while later. More and more miners jumped on the crytpocurrency bandwagon in hopes of making some extra dough, and maybe even eventually striking it rich, as some early adopters of Bitcoin did. But since then, Ethereum has fallen in value, declining to a low of $133 over the weekend. It's currently trading at around $170-$180.

It has also become more difficult to mine over the past month. Have a look at the steep trend line from the beginning of June until now:

From our vantage point, the difficulty in mining has caused about a 10 percent drop in profitability, while the falling price has made Ethereum mining 50 percent (or more) less profitable. Power costs remain constant, so where an RX 580 might have grossed up to $5 per day next last month, it will now only gross around $1.70. That means instead of a net profit of $4, it's now down to a net gain only $1.25 (at a power cost of $0.10 per kWh). Generally speaking, it looks like a typical miner might have to wait six months or more to pay for a GPU hardware investment, compared to two or three months.

This is a good thing for gamers. While crytpocurrencies like Bitcoin (SHA256) are far more easily mined on ASIC hardware, othere's like Ethereum (Dagger-Hashimoto) and ZCash (Equihash) use algorithms that are resistant to ASIC hardware. Combined with Ethereum's spiking value, miners went running for the hills with as many GPUs as they could carry in what became a modern day gold rush.

This resulted in a shortage of many desirable graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia. The best bang-for-buck options for gaming are also great options for mining, but there just aren't enough parts to meet the demand of both markets. Cards like the Radeon RX 570 have been out of stock or grossly overpriced by third-party vendors, such as this Gigabyte Aorus Radeon RX 570 going for $550. And that's not even the most expensive RX 570 SKU out there. PowerColor's Red Devil variant is listed on Newegg (through a third-party) for $639.

It's a crazy situation, but here's hoping that recent events restore some sanity to the graphics card market. There's an RX 580 8GB currently in stock at Newegg for 'only' $310, which is still way over MSRP, but the coming weeks should see inventories and prices start to return to normal. If you'd rather not wait for inventory levels to even out, you can also check second-hand sites for deals.

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Steep decline in cryptocurrency market has miners dumping their ... - PC Gamer

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