Financial fraud prevention is the set of habits, settings and checks that stop criminals from taking money or credit before any damage occurs. It matters because recovering stolen funds is slow and uncertain, especially when…
Nothing at stake attacks describe a weakness in naive proof of stake designs, where validators lose nothing by supporting several competing versions of the blockchain at the same time. Because signing a block costs almost…
Financial identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal details, such as your name, government ID number or account information, to obtain money, credit or services while posing as you. The victim often learns about…
Financial data breaches happen when an organization that holds your banking, card, tax or identity details loses control of them, usually to criminals. You rarely cause these incidents yourself, yet you often carry much of…
Long range attacks are a threat specific to proof of stake blockchains, in which an attacker builds an alternative history starting from a point far in the past. If the fake chain looks valid, a…
Selfish mining attacks are a strategy in which a miner deliberately keeps newly found blocks secret instead of publishing them right away. By releasing those hidden blocks at carefully chosen moments, the miner can cause…
Financial data deletion is the process of having your financial information permanently erased, whether by a bank, an app, a merchant or you on your own devices and accounts. It is one of the most…
Eclipse attacks target a single blockchain node by surrounding it with attacker-controlled peers, so that every message it receives passes through the attacker first. The victim still runs correct software, but its picture of the…
Financial data brokers are companies that collect, combine and sell information about people’s money, such as estimated income, homeownership, credit-related segments and purchase habits, usually without any direct relationship with the people described. Most consumers…
Financial data sharing is the movement of information about your accounts, payments and identity from one organization to another. Banks, card issuers, lenders and apps share data constantly, sometimes because a payment cannot work otherwise,…