Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Everything technology touches gets a digital makeover and the creative space wouldn’t be the exception. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are virtual assets that represent objects influenced by art, music, games, and videos. You can only buy them online, likely with cryptocurrency. NFTs are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos. In fact, they are part of the Ethereum blockchain, a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin.

Cryptocurrency, the next generation of money. Adored by luminaries from Elon Musk to Snoop Dogg. Now the official currency of El Salvador, and a funding source for Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. But is crypto really all that it seems? Cryptocurrency has tremendous potential to address a host of the world’s financial issues: from limited access to financial resources, to ineffective and costly payment and transfer services.

It should come as no surprise that as cryptocurrencies become more popular and edge towards the mainstream, the mining of these digital currencies—which uses computing power to solve complex math problem— has given rise to a new form of cyber attack: cryptojacking. Cryptojacking may sound like a way to steal someone's cryptocurrency assets, but it's a less obvious form of theft.

Tetra Defense, an Arctic Wolf® company, partnered with Chainalysis to analyze the link between the Karakurt cyber extortion group to both Conti and Diavol ransomware through Tetra’s digital forensics and Chainalysis’ blockchain analytics. As recent leaks have revealed, Conti and Trickbot are complicated operations with sophisticated structures. But, our findings indicate that web is even wider than originally thought, to include additional exfiltration-only operations.