Kaspersky Eyes Security Offerings to ICOs and Crypto Exchanges

Once hailed as unhackable, nowadays blockchain’s vulnerabilities are a widely discussed topic.

Coin Central has even done a painstaking piece about the many varieties of ways blockchain can vulnerable, including examples like the Backlog Blues, where formerly fraudulent DDoS spam transactions are not purged from the backlog, and one year after the “stress test”, major mining pools at the time began accepting these spam transactions into blocks, reducing the throughput of legitimate transaction.

The article also names the 51% majority attack, though this is more likely to impact blockchain that is not decentralised enough. If an attacker gains control over a majority of the hash power of the network, then they would be able to mine blocks faster than the rest of the network, creating an opportunity for ‘double-spending’.

Enter Kaspersky in this Wary Blockchain Climate

General tech-based business wisdom dictates that a security measures should be put in place to protect against attacks, and the same is true for blockchain. To that end, famous antivirus company Kaspersky is now trying to eke a stronger presence into the blockchain space, especially now that the climate is more wary.

Kaspersky Lab announces service packages it says considers the specifics of how blockchain-related business models work, and the life cycle of token offerings and crypto exchanges in its security solutions.

Some of its specialised offerings include the Smart Contract Code Review which it touts to identify flaws and undeclared features, as well as finds discrepancies between stated in the supporting documentations and smart-contract business logic.

There’s also the Application Security Assessment, which claims to help teams analyse the security of applications developed by startups. and for exchanges, detect any bugs and address them before they cause any damage.

Kaspersky Lab also claims to offer crypto exchanges with fraud and money laundering prevention, and targeted attack detection.

The company hopes capitalise on the digital token scene touting an estimated total market capitalisation of US$362 billion, and according to PwC, an ICO scene which collected more than US$19.7 billion in 2018, which is interesting as it is popularly considered the year of ICO slowdown.

Vitaly Mzokov, Head of Verification at Kaspersky Lab said:

Vitaly Mzokov

“Blockchain services are not always secure enough to be worth investing into. We’ve been growing our expertise in this field and already conducted several projects for ICOs.”

“We see a growing demand for cybersecurity from blockchain startups that are looking for both protection from cyberthreats and additional evidence that they can be trusted by investors.”

Featured image is a screenshot of a video by Stilt Creative on Vimeo