Leaked Documents Show the NSA Hacked Into SWIFT

In “documents and files” released Friday, Reuters reports, an hacker group named Shadow Brokers said it had evidence the NSA used SWIFT to “monitor money flows among some Middle Eastern and Latin American banks.” If true, the news are a blow to SWIFT, which last year recorded several high-level security failures worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The news marks the second time Shadow Brokers has laid claim to compromising NSA secrets. In August 2016, the group said it had entered an agency affiliate and taken details of cyberweapons, which it planned to auction for one million bitcoins. Mustafa Al-Bassam, computer science researcher at University College London, commented on the findings:

“NSA hacked a bunch of banks, oil and investment companies in Palestine, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, more,”

Read more here

The DAO Ethereum Classic Refund Effort Has Been Extended

More than $4m worth of classic ether remains in a DAO refund smart contract that has been extended to next January. Community members have been pushing for users to withdraw their funds but just over 1.5m classic ethers haven't been accessed so far. Notably, the other major DAO-related withdrawal contract, for the exchange of DAO tokens for ETH, contains more than 450k unclaimed ethers, worth roughly $21m at current prices.

Read more here

Ledger Secures $7 Million More In Series A Funding

Ledger, a bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by MAIF Avenir, bringing total funding to $8.5 million, according to a company blog. Participating in the round were Digital Currency Group, Xange, Libertus Capital, Wicklow Capital, GDTRE, BHB Network, The Whittemore Collection, Kima Ventures and Nicolas Pinto.

The new funding will be used to develop the sales, marketing, engineering and support teams through the recruitment of 20 new collaborators. It will help accelerate the launch of a new enterprise security product for cryptocurrencies, opening new lines of revenues for Ledger.

Read more here