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Ethereum: ConsenSys’s New Privacy Policy Causes Huge Uproar

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ConsenSys, an Ethereum-based blockchain firm and owner of the popular wallet MetaMask, has recently updated its privacy policy and Crypto Twitter is furious.

Under the new guidelines, MetaMask’s RPC [Remote Procedure Call] node Infura would collect the user’s IP address as well as wallet address while sending a transaction. MetaMask [by default] uses Infura to get information on and off of blockchains.

Consensys further said. “However, if you’re using your own Ethereum node or a third-party RPC provider with MetaMask, then neither Infura nor MetaMask will collect your IP address or Ethereum wallet address.”

Many in the community have urged users to uninstall MetaMask and migrate to a new wallet.

Just recently, popular decentralized exchange [DEX] Uniswap updated its privacy policy, attracting ire from the decentralized buffs. The concerns were similarly related to collecting and storing user data and how it goes against crypto’s core ethos of user privacy and anonymity. 

ConsenSys’s latest privacy policy comes in light of the FTX crisis, an event that brought attention to the need for transparency.

Transparency has now become the buzzword in the industry ever since the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX earlier this month. The once dominant platform was accused of misusing customer assets in risky trading.

Soon after the incident, the crypto entities rushed to win back clients’ faith by promising to be “transparent,” notably by introducing Proof of Reserves in the case of centralized exchanges.

Ethereum Software Firm’s Latest Privacy Policy Has Shined the Spotlight On Transparency

The world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance led the way and accordingly Kraken, Bitmex, Coinfloor, Gate.io HBTC, OKX, KuCoin and a host of other exchanges followed suit.

Ironically, Binance which championed Proof Of Reserves [PoR] in the wake of FTX’s bankruptcy was slammed for an undisclosed $2.7 billion USDT transfer that was initiated less than 24 hours after the audit publication, TronWeekly reported the other day.

A Reddit post by a user called OneThatNoseOne accused the trading platform of not revealing the wallet in their proof-of-reserves article.

The anonymous user urged Binance to take action in offering transparency at a time when users’ confidence in cryptocurrencies is at an all-time low so that people like him don’t have to dig through mountains of data for something they could have easily provided.

Ethereum Tool Provider Unveils Plan For A Decentralized Protocol

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Ethereum tool developer Infura has outlined its vision to create a Decentralized Infrastructure Network in 2023, as per the Tweet.

This is to enable network nodes to run effectively so developers and users of apps like MetaMask don’t have to do it themselves. For Ethereum and other blockchains like Polygon and Near, this would be like Amazon Web Services.

“In the past, this complexity presented itself as a centralization hurdle as it restricts who can run such a service as part of a decentralized infrastructure network”, the blog read.

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Ethereum Tool Provider Unveils Plan For A Decentralized Protocol 2

Access to Web3 products will be made available to “millions of future consumers” via this new network, “without disruptions and downtime due to a single point of failure,” according to a statement.

In recent years, several teams have overcome these technological, logistical, and financial hurdles. There is now a flourishing ecosystem of highly reliable infrastructure providers and this makes it the perfect time to take the next step in the journey toward progressive decentralization.

Infura, a part of ConsenSys, offers Web3 businesses the backend infrastructure they need to introduce their goods. It gives companies a method to connect to decentralized ledgers like Ethereum without having to manage their own nodes.

Joseph Lubin founded ConsenSys, which also runs MetaMask, the most well-known self-custody cryptocurrency wallet. Infura offers services to more than 430,000 developers globally and its competitors include Alchemy and Blockdaemon.

Apart from that, Infura is also exploring issuing a token, so clients could pay for usage, Galano said. Infura is already accepting applications from operators interested in joining its early access program.

Infura Handles Over 50% of Transactions On The Ethereum Network

“It helps solve one of the concerns about the centralization problem with Ethereum,” Eleazar Galano a co-founder of the startup said. “What we are doing is, when people are accessing the data it can be done in a decentralized way.”

Galano also claimed that more than 50% of transactions on the Ethereum network have at times gone through Infura.

Nevertheless, its proposal to offer a decentralized version of the service, in the first half of 2023, might therefore have major implications for Ethereum stakeholders. Investors and authorities alike are keeping a clsoe watch on that.

MetaMask Joins Hands With Asset Reality to Assist in Recovering Stolen Crypto

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To assist users in recovering stolen funds, Metamask has partnered with Asset Reality, a platform for accessing and recovering seized crypto and digital assets. The service is free, but customers must pay any applicable litigation fees.

The new collaboration has the potential to make legal action against scammers considerably easier for victims, as they will be able to pool their resources and split the costs of litigation.

how to steal bitcoin
MetaMask Joins Hands With Asset Reality to Assist in Recovering Stolen Crypto 4

MetaMask’s initiative to assist victims

Metamask is one of the most popular non-custodial wallets in the world, with over 30 million monthly active users. However, as cryptocurrency’s popularity has grown, so has the number of frauds and phishing attempts aimed at early adopters.

Scams involving stolen assets have been particularly difficult to combat because Metamask does not have access to users’ cash. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, which is based on pseudo-anonymity and immutability, has made it difficult for entities to track and recover stolen cash.

According to the official release, the new cooperation intends to assist users in recovering their digital assets, with Asset Reality in charge of researching scam operations.

All Metamask users throughout the world will be able to use the new service. Victims must report their losses through the official Metamask site, according to the press release.

Aidan Larkin, the company’s CEO, saw the relationship as a critical step toward closing a gap in the sector:

“When a user has funds stolen, often due to being scammed into handing over their passwords or Secret Recovery Phrase, they often have nowhere to turn to, in what is an incredibly difficult time for them emotionally and financially.”

According to Asset Reality, the usual system demands victims to pay a significant amount of litigation fees during the lengthy litigation process. The company will bring victims together to pursue collective action in order to change how things are done. In this approach, even users who have suffered a minor loss may be able to reclaim their possessions.

CoinGecko Phishing Alert! Malicious Pop-ups Entice Users To Link MetaMask Wallets

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Crypto data aggregator CoinGecko has been hit by a malicious pop-up prompting users to connect their MetaMask wallets. The platform which alerted users through Twitter later updated that it was caused by a malicious ad script by Coinzilla, a crypto ad network while stating,

We have disabled it now but there may be some delay due to CDN caching. We are monitoring the situation further. Do stay on alert and don’t connect your Metamask on CoinGecko.

Later Coinzilla came forward with a series of tweets and added that a single campaign containing a piece of malicious code has managed to pass its automated security checks before the team stopped it and locked the account.

“Our team will manually review and recreate all the creatives used by our clients. This is to remove ad codes from any 3rd party scripts. Furthermore, we will be closely working with our publishers to offer support to affected users, identify the person that was behind the attack, and act accordingly”, the tweet read.

Not only CoinGecko, several well-known crypto sites including Etherscan, and DexTools have warned users that they were aware of illegal popups emerging for visitors, and advised them not to conduct any transactions with these links.

CoinGecko attack originated from a BAYC-linked domain

Reports further mentioned that the suspicious link appeared to come from a website displaying the Bored Ape Yacht Club project, with an ape skull logo and a now-deactivated nftapes.win domain.

It urged users to connect their MetaMask, a crypto wallet app to use on the site, and due to its popularity, users often risk mistaking it as legitimate and giving it access.

The MetaMask crypto wallet is the one most commonly used by holders of Ethereum cryptocurrencies with over 30 million active users as of March.

Barely a month ago, a Phishing scam targeted MetaMask Crypto Wallet Holders Netting $650k. This was due to a flaw in its default settings where the app writes the security seed phrase needed for remote access to iCloud backups.

In February 2022, OpenSea came under a $1.7 million phishing attack where hackers exploited a planned upgrade to trick users into essentially signing a blank NFT check.

Apple Users Warned by MetaMask as iCloud Phishing Attacks Increase

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MetaMask, a crypto wallet company owned by ConsenSys, has issued a warning to the public about Apple iCloud phishing assaults.

The vulnerability affects iPhone, Mac, and iPad users since default device settings save a user’s seed phrase or “password-encrypted MetaMask vault” on the iCloud if the user has allowed automatic backups for their app data.

Users risk losing their assets if their Apple password “isn’t strong enough” and an attacker is able to phish their account credentials, according to a Twitter thread posted on April 18.

To ensure the safety of the wallet, MetaMask released a tweet detailing the instructions:

Warnings from a MetaMask user who fell, victim

The MM warning came in response to allegations from an NFT collector known on Twitter as “revive dom,” who reported on April 15 that this precise security problem deleted his whole wallet, which included $650,000 worth of digital currencies and NFTs.

DAPE NFT project founder “Serpent” – who also helped capture the attention of MetaMask by sharing the news with their 277,000 followers – presented a synopsis of what occurred to the victim in a different thread earlier today.

The victim got repeated text messages urging him to change his Apple ID password, as well as a phony call from Apple that was ultimately a faked caller ID, according to him.

“revive dom” gave over a six-digit verification number to establish that he was the owner of the Apple account, despite the fact that he was apparently unaware of the caller. The fraudsters then hung up and used data from his iCloud account to get access to his MetaMask account.

“revive dom” expressed his displeasure with MetaMask after the warning was issued today, saying that:

“I’m not saying they shouldn’t do it; I’m just saying they should inform us about it.” Don’t tell us we should never keep our seed phrase online, then go ahead and do it behind our backs. If 90% of people were aware of this, I’m willing to bet that none of them would have the app or iCloud turned on.”

MetaMask Blocks Venezuelan Users Amid Sanctions

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Venezuelan MetaMask users claim they can no longer use the popular digital asset wallet.

On Wednesday, messages concerning the problem began to appear on social media, with multiple cases spreading by late Thursday morning. The API for Infura, a blockchain node infrastructure network, is thought to be the culprit.

“MetaMask and Infura are inaccessible in some areas due to legal compliance,” a MetaMask help website updated an hour before press time.

A screenshot of an error message similar to the type that has been circulating on social media, which has put users unhappy.

The news of the restrictions sparked debate over whether or not VPNs could be used to get around the problem.

The Infura reconfiguration had a knock-on impact on wallet users, according to MetaMask. However, users were not barred. “MetaMask uses Infura as its default endpoint,” the company’s official account tweeted, adding, “although this configuration may be updated by users if desired, or in the event of any service outages.”

MetaMask abiding to US sanctions

The extent to which the claimed blockades indicate a tightening of restrictions in relation to other nations sanctioned by the US and other governments is still unknown. Although a majority of the current complaints appear to be about Venezuelan access, users from Iran and Lebanon appear to have been affected.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States, the European Union, and other countries imposed harsh sanctions on the land.

Western nations have imposed limitations on state-owned firms, government officials, and oligarchs, in addition to freezing hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign deposits and disconnecting individual Russian banks’ links with the SWIFT messaging network.

Sanctions imposed by the United States apply to firms doing business in the United States, including ConsenSys and its products, to ensure that no assets are transferred to forbidden nations, corporations, or persons.

However, because the penalties are designed to be targeted, most ordinary persons’ cryptocurrency transactions are not expected to be immediately harmed.

As a result, the blanket Infura ban of “certain regions” has sparked concerns that ConsenSys has limited access to innocent individuals to comply with government demands.

Metamask and AirGap will let you turn your phone into a hardware wallet

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Metamask comes to the rescue with their new collaboration with AirGap. You all might have an old phone on the shelves. Now you can put it to good use to safeguard your crypto assets. Metamask’s new collaboration will let users use their old phone or any one of their phones as a hardware wallet.

Whether it is an Android or an iOS, Airgap can turn either of them into a hardware wallet.

What is AirGap?

AirGap works in a non-internet connected manner, safeguarding your private keys totally offline and approving transactions with QR codes. It helps you protect your crypto and store your private keys offline. It is based on a two-device approach, simultaneously increasing security and usability. AirGap vault, which will be installed on a dedicated smartphone, will be completely offline and has no connection to any network; thus, it will be air-gapped. It will be accompanied by the companion application AirGap wallet, which will be installed on your everyday phone.

What will Metamask and Airgap collaboration provide?

You can now link AirGap Vault to MetaMask and use it to check your balance for all tokens, sign transactions, interact with dapps, buy, sell, and mint NFTs. AirGap already works on BSC and Ethereum, and it is effortless to connect your metamask with airgap. Every user who owns a Metamask wallet can follow a few steps to connect with airgap. Users can find a complete guide to the steps here.

Rising importance to store your funds offline

It is critical to understand how to appropriately safeguard cryptocurrency to avoid becoming a statistic. The ultimate safest place for your cryptocurrency is to generate private keys offline and store them as encrypted text files on a USB stick. It’s also crucial to strike a balance between security and accessibility. It will be just as harmful to secure your crypto assets as it will be to have them stolen from you. 

Hackers can hack anything, no matter how “unhackable” someone claims it is. It’s only a question of time. What is the most susceptible method of being hacked? The internet, to be precise.

As a result, staying much further away from the internet as practicable is critical when keeping cryptocurrency. Storing cryptocurrency on a hot desktop wallet or an exchange is highly dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.

Private keys and transactions may be produced fully offline, something many crypto investors are unaware of. This gives you direct control over your assets and prevents hackers, governments, and prying eyes from gaining access to your private key information.

ConsenSys acquires MyCrypto: Plans to team up with MetaMask

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ConsenSys, a renowned Ethereum software corporation, just announced its acquisition of MyCrypto. MyCrypto is an open-source platform that allows you to manage your Ethereum accounts in a safe and accessible setting. They also intend to integrate with MetaMask ultimately. They made the announcement through their official blog post.

ConsenSys Acquires MyCrypto to Team Up With MetaMask

MetaMask and MyCrypto will be tying their efforts under a unified brand to strengthen the security of all the products and offer a consistent user experience across desktop, mobile, extension, and browser wallets.

MetaMask has focused on general-purpose dapp interactions and has developed to become the world’s biggest non-custodial crypto wallet for mobile and browser extensions with over 21 million monthly active users. MetaMask and MyCrypto visions to give users a heightened experience that is even more extensive and safe through this collaboration.

ConsenSys and Metamask: What can users expect?

“User safety and product security are the key facets of both MetaMask and MyCrypto,” said Taylor Monahan, founder, and CEO of MyCrypto. Security, she added, is of growing relevance as the ecosystem evolves and a wider broad variety of individuals enter the crypto realm.

“We want to make sure that everyone has a nice experience with cryptocurrencies. Namely, not losing all of their crypto.”

The collaboration with MyCrypto will not only introduce MetaMask to further platforms and stimulate further integrations with the wallet, but it will also give users a better and more secure experience.

ConsenSys did not reveal the terms of the acquisition. They highlighted that both wallets would continue to function individually shortly with the final purpose of incorporating features and branding.

Crypto wallets and their safety concerns

Crypto wallets, including Metamask, have been victimized for easy to breach security systems. A cryptographer and security analyst Alexandru Lupascu pointed out a vulnerability of Metamask that can jeopardize the funds of 21 million users. Cold wallets, including Trezor, were hacked by an engineer, who went out and explained in a video of the process.

The recent spree of hacks has put users in a tight spot whether their funds are safe. Collaborations like this with an intention to provide a more secure platform for users will soon grow to fame.

Critical Privacy Vulnerability can Jeopardize 21 million Metamask Users Data, says Researcher

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Cryptographer and security analyst Alexandru Lupascu, the co-founder of OMNIA protocol, found Metamask vulnerable. During his recent research, he came across and pointed out that Metamask crypto wallet users could be in jeopardy and might lose all their digital assets.

In his recent medium article, he mentioned that he spent time with this team researching different NFT airdrop situations. They bumbled upon a scenario that could compromise the privacy of more than 21 million people.

“It’s quite a potent scenario, too, as it has the potential to be eight times more devastating than a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. And I’m saying that after comparing it to some of the most notorious attacks to hit the news last year.”

Alexandru Lupascu

How dangerous is it?

Alexandru shows how a malevolent actor may create an NFT, transmit it to a victim, and acquire their IP address, putting their privacy at risk. This is a significant privacy flaw in the blockchain ecosystem that anyone may attack for as little as $50.

Do not undervalue the threat posed by IP leaks. Alexandru adds: if hostile actors obtain other information from the IP address (such as geolocation or GSM carrier), they may transform it into a physical threat, such as kidnapping.

Alexandru detailed how the invasion is carried out, from minting an NFT to sending it to the target, obtaining the victim’s IP address, and, finally, jeopardizing their privacy or stealing their crypto assets. He used the iOS Metamask software version 3.7.0 to test this attack, but it might also apply to Android.

Are the users safe now?

Alexandru identified the flaw in early December 2021, and after examining Metamask’s Mobile security policy, they contacted them on December 14, 2021.

They informed us that this is a known problem being addressed as part of a responsible disclosure schedule.

After the study went public, Daniel Finlay, the founder of MetaMask, verified the problem and pledged to resolve it as soon as possible. He also added, “Alex is right to call us out for not addressing it sooner. Starting work on it now. Thanks for the kick in the pants, and sorry we needed it.”

Google Suspends Ethereum Dapp Browser MetaMask Android App 

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No, it wasn’t only YouTube that removed crypto-related videos from its platform; Google is also on a crypto purge. A recent tweet by Ehtereum Dapp browser MetaMask reveals that Google play store suspended its android app citing “deceptive services”.

Google Rejects MetaMask’s Appeal

On December 26, MetaMask elaborates that their appeal was rejected as Google claims that MetaMask violated Google’s financial services policies. The tweet reads that Google cited “their policy that bans mining on mobile” but MetaMask denied Google’s claim.

However, the nub of the matter is that MetaMask is an Ethereum application browser and it essentially doesn’t offer mining activities. Taking up this stance, MetaMask writes;

 

“I very much hope that this was an honest mistake on the part of Google’s reviewers, but in combination with all the crypto YouTube bans, it definitely puts me at disease about how Google is engaging with decentralizing technologies. If people accept this behavior from a mobile monopoly like Google, we may not deserve something better.”

More so, the platform covers 264,000 monthly active users. It was the pioneer opera browser in 2018 which had introduced Web3 capability to their desktop browser and mobile app. Nevertheless, this isn’t the first of its kind for MetaMask, previously its chrome browser extension was temporarily delisted. The news came in a wake of YouTube’s hype of removing crypto videos from several popular Youtube channels.

Interestingly, the entire YouTue scene is slowly turning into a nightmare as its representative claimed that the removal was an error. YouTube officially announced it as follows;

 

Hey there, this was an error on our side during the review process – your video should be reinstated and strikes resolved. Let us know if you’re seeing otherwise!

These recent incidents with centralized platforms like Google and YouTube are directing users to find the most viable “decentralized-based approach”.