Financial businesses offering tokenisation or crypto investment products should be vigilant as criminal activities – such as hacking – start to rise once more, according to a former military security director.
Speaking at Money 20/20 Asia in Bangkok on Tuesday (23 April), Shahar Madar, VP of security and trust products at Fireblocks, warned “attackers are still after us,” cautioning firms not to let their guard down after published statistics suggested criminal activity had dropped in 2023.
Madar said the bull run in crypto markets had acted as a magnet for hostile activities, with criminals being smarter and more creative than ever before with their approaches.
He said: “When they go into Web3 or blockchain, they are looking to steal money or tokenised assets, or anything they can immediately swap out. It is an easier way of making money.”
Madar warned financial companies of increasingly sophisticated attacks where bad actors have sought to gain employment and seniority within businesses to be granted permissions to deploy malicious code to facilitate breaches or withdrawals, at a later date.
Madar urged businesses to examine who is “really” on their team and think carefully about the extent to which sales and marketing staff are granted access to sensitive information.
“How do you manage and control privileged access?” he asked. “Not everyone should have the same access to your project.”
The former Israeli Intelligence director added that attacks should not be expected to be only linked to vulnerabilities in a company’s code.
“They can still go for your team,” he said. “They can leverage their assets or recruit someone to operate as a part of your team. It could be someone you think you can trust, who later turns against you.”