With the skill-set that we have, you’d think human beings are practically perfect in every sense. However, as we’ll find out, reality is a bit different. Human beings actually have a ton of flaws. These flaws also concern different aspects within our lives, therefore restricting us across a wide spectrum. Now, when you are dealing with such a setup, it’s obvious that you will try to get out of it, and we did so by conjuring up some helpful tools. While these tools did make a notable impact in regards to aiding our cause, they were all left behind in dust once technology turned up on the scene. You see, this was a creation, which would go on to define a whole era. In hindsight, it’s easy to appreciate what technology has done for us thus far, but you can’t really have the said discussion without mentioning its flipside. Yes, we are referring to how, alongside making the world smarter, the creation has also made us more vulnerable than ever before. This has been validated time and time again through many cybersecurity fails over the years. In fact, we got to see another one only recently.
After suffering a major cyberattack on its systems, CoinDesk has reportedly fixed the exploit that led to it. Basically, certain bad actors discovered a method through which they could access CoinDesk’s backend publishing system. Their method talked to manipulating the CoinDesk’s API for publishing content. The move then transitioned into API showing a long error message to any bad request. Interestingly enough, the error message also offered a way to access the system in question, therefore eventually taking the bad actors to their promised land. Once they were in, the users had every authority to make changes to existing articles, add fake drafts, and learn critical information that could give them an unfair trading advantage.
“The exploit, which was brought to CoinDesk’s attention by a white-hat hacker, may have allowed unidentified actors to profit from nonpublic information by making trades ahead of the publication of at least one article,” Kevin Worth, CoinDesk’s chief content officer. The issue is now fixed and added safeguards have been put in place.”
It’s not the first time we are witnessing such a case. If we dig into the past for a second, we’ll see how platforms like BusinessWire had to deal with starkly similar incidents where a hacker was able to gain early access to press releases and other important information, including stock market-related news.