Monero’s Malware Response Workgroup platform to help users better manage attacks

Response group offer live support by industry professionals

Newly released patch to secure the network from costly attacks on user wallets

In a recent blogpost Justin Ehrenhofer announced the launch of the Malware Response Workgroup, a team set up to help combat the rampant scams and attacks targeting the Monero community. They hope to accomplish this by educating users on ways to better avoid or manage dangerous situations.

The Malware Response Workgroup

Although there are perfectly legitimate reasons to make use of a privacy coin like Monero, the privacy feature does make it a more desirable cryptocurrency than most for cybercriminals of every kind. Whether an attacker mines Monero with infected computers without the victim’s knowledge or encrypts their hard drive for ransom, Monero’s privacy feature makes it safe and easy to conceal where the money came from.

The workgroup, among other things, will help educate the community on ways to protect themselves from such attacks, and to better manage these situations when they do arise – even offering live support for some issues.

Bug Patch Released

Prior to the launch of #monero-mrw, Monero developers discovered a bug, called the Burning Bug. In short, it worked by sending a single transaction multiple times to a stealth address, causing the funds to end up unusable/unspendable for the recipient.

This led to a Reddit user describing an attack that could happen if funds were sent to an exchange. Though the funds can’t be sent anywhere by the exchange, they can be traded for other cryptocurrencies and withdrawn by the attacker. Effectively destroying money for the exchange.

Shortly after this, the team released a patch with Monero Wallet v0.12.3.0 build. They also privately notified exchanges about the update to prevent such attacks in the future.

The Monero community, being one of the most active with many dedicated developers has been ceaselessly working to making the community a better and more secure ecosystem and steadily driving the XMR toward global adoption.