Crypto Security

October is Cyber Security month and crypto security is an incredibly important topic — so we decided to give you all a 101 on how to keep your crypto assets safe. In this episode of CRYPTO 101, Matthew chatted with Ray [REDACTED] who helped walk us through some of the basics when it comes to protecting your blockchain investments.

#1 Priority: Decrease Your “Attack Surface Area”

According to Ray, everything you do concerning keeping your crypto safe comes down to one thing: minimizing what he calls your “attack surface area”. This just means doing whatever you can to minimize the ways in which someone, should they wish to attack you, can go about trying to do so. If you have a large “attack surface area” you are giving potential attachers plenty of options and opportunity to launch an attack

#1 Vulnerability: Greed

Along with your #1 priority (minimising that attack surface area), greed is your # vulnerability, particularly when it comes to scammers. Human greed is a powerful emotion that can overwhelm your rational decision making. Scammers and other attackers know this and can take advantage of it. Ray’s advice: if you feel pressured, rushed or increasing levels of FOMO over an opportunity that seems like it is ‘now or never’ you are being influenced by greed — just walk away and give yourself time to think it through logically.
 

#1 Rule: Don’t — Trust — Anybody

Even yourself. If you can't trust yourself to not be influenced by greed at 2am, three beers deep while trawling through Reddit, then don't put yourself in that position. As soon as you trust a third party, even a close friend or family member who might be totally trustworthy — you’ve just increased your “attack surface area” by spreading valuable information across more people. Sometimes you have to share information, just always be aware of the risks of doing so.

Things To Watch Out For:

• Twitter Scams
  • These are the common ones and are pretty easy to identify. They mimic well-known people on twitter and promise too-good-to-be-true benefits for very little (but swift) action. They appeal to your greed and sense of FOMO. 
• Chat Scams
  • Oftentimes we have legitmate questions we might take to Reddit, Twitter, Telegram etc. in the hopes of having someone offerto guide us. Unfortunately, scammers lurch here too and are all-too-ready to “come to the aid” when people ask for help. The thing to watch out for here is any request for personal information, and especially private keys. 
• Key loggers
  • These are specific software-based scams whose sole purpose is to take a recording of what order you punch in characters on your keyboard. They can be used to steal passwords and usernames. The thing to watch out for is making sure the websites you visit are complete https addresses (make sure of this by bookmarking important sites) and never punch in sensitive strings of information into interfaces you do not recognise.
• Phishing 
  • This is an umbrella term for a family of scams that are designed to play on human vulnerabilities and sensitivities in order to pull (phish) personal information from you which can then be used to access accounts or reset passwords. Always keep personal information, even your mother’s maiden name, out of reach from strangers. Remember: Don’t — Trust — Anyone! 

Things You Can Do:

Password Hygiene:

• Don’t reuse passwords. This is one of the biggest security problems people face. Once a hacker has one of your passwords, they can immediately try it against all of your accounts. Don’t allow this to succeed.
• Have unique logins for all exchanges and crypto wallets
  • A great tip here is that you can add “+anything” to your existing email address to change your email to a different login. So “[email protected]” could become “[email protected]”
• Always set up 2FA (two factor authentication)
  • Use the mobile Apps Authy or Google Authenticator. Don’t use SMS, it has been proven to be insecure.

  Patch Hygiene:

• Alwayskeep your software up to date. Wherever there is a patch implemented for a wallet or app, install it as soon as possible. These often have security fixes for known issues.

Air Gap Hygiene:

• Keep the devices, browsers, bookmarks, wifi connections etc. that are in play when you are trading, transferring or accessing your crypto for any reason as free from third party clutter as possible.
• Never log on to your crypto wallets or exchanges on public wifi, or anyone else’s wifi for that matter.

Final Word:

Ray reminds us that when it comes to crypto exchanges, “It’s not if they will be hacked it’s when they will be hacked” so keep as little unnecessary value on them. And perhaps his best advice: “Spend more time reading and less time trading”

Ray and Matthew are taking your security questions. Have a listen to the podcast and send any questions you still have regarding crypto security either to the emailor Ray’s twitter and the guys will be back with another security installment with the answers.