Headline, March 12 2025/ CRYPTO'S : ''' SOFT WARE SOUL '''

CRYPTO'S : 

''' SOFT WARE SOUL '''

BUSINESS : ON THE NIGHT OF FEB. 21 - BEN ZHOU, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction.

His company was moving a large amount of Ether, a popular digital currency from one account to another.

Thirty minutes later, Mr. Zhou got a call from  Bybit's chief financial officer. In an trembling voice, the executive told Mr. Zhou that their system had been hacked.

'' All of the Ethereum is gone,'' he said.

When Mr. Zhou approved the transaction, he had inadvertently handed control of an account to hackers backed by the North Korean government, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They stole $1.5 billion in cryptocurrencies, the largest heist in the industry's history.

To pull off the astonishing breach, the hackers exploited a simple flaw in Bybit's security : It's reliance on a free software product. They penetrated Bybit by manipulating a publicly available system that the exchange used to safeguard hundreds of millions of dollars in customer deposits.

For years, Bybit had relied on the storage software, developed by a technology provider  called Safe, even as other security firms sold more specialised tools for businesses.

The hack sent crypto markets into a free fall and undermined confidence in the industry at a crucial time. Under the crypto-friendly Trump administration, industry executives are lobbying for new U.S. laws and regulations that would make it easier for people to pour their savings into digital currencies.

On Friday, the White House was scheduled to host a '' crypto summit '' involving President Trump and industry leaders.

Crypto security experts said they were troubled by what the heist revealed about Bybit's safety protocols. The losses were '' completely preventable,'' one security firm wrote in an analysis of the breach, arguing that it '' should not have happened.''

Safe's storage tool is widely used in the crypto industry. But it is better suited for crypto hobbyists than exchanges handling billions in customer deposits, said Charles Guillemet, an executive at Ledger, a French crypto security firm that offers a storage system designed for companies.

'' This really needs to change,'' he said. '' It's not an acceptable situation in 2025.''

At Bybit, the hack set off a frantic 48 hours. The company oversees as much as $20 billion in customers' deposits but did not have enough Ether on hand to cover the losses from the $1.5 billion heist.

Mr. Zhou, 38, raced to keep the business afloat by borrowing from other firms and drawing on corporate reserves to meet a surge of withdrawal requests. On social media, he seemed surprisingly relaxed, announcing a few hours after the theft that his stress levels were '' not too bad.''

As the crisis unfolded, the price of Bitcoin, a bellwether for the industry, plunged 20 percent.  It was the steepest drop since the 2022 failure of  FTX, the exchange run by disgraced mogul Sam Bankman-Fried.

In an interview this past week, Mr. Zhou acknowledged that Bybit had received advance warning about possible problems with Safe.  Three or four months before the hack, he said, the company noticed that the software was not fully compatible with one of its other security services.

'' We should have upgraded and moved away from Safe, '' Mr. Zhou said. '' We're definitely looking to do that now.''

Rahul Rumalla, Safe's chief product officer, said in a statement that his team had created new security features to protect users and that Safe's products were '' the treasury backbone for some of the largest organizations in the space.''

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Crypto, and the world, continues. The World Students Society thanks David Yaffe-Bellany.

With respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.  

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! - the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

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