Merkle Science and Halborn to Discuss Crypto Hacks in Upcoming Webinar

On Monday, October 14 at 10 am ET, blockchain analytics company Merkle Science and blockchain security firm Halborn will be hosting a one-hour webinar, Crypto Hacks in 2024: Have We Truly Learned From Crypto’s All-Time Biggest Hacks?

Moderated by André Beganski of Decrypt Media, the webinar will feature Robert Whitaker & Dr. Justus Delp from Merkle Science along with Piotr Cielas and Mar Gimenez-Aguilar from Halborn. These experts will use crypto’s biggest hacks as a springboard for gaining insight on emerging trends, latest developments, and actionable strategies to enhance security against crypto crime. 

Register for the webinar here. 

The Webinar’s Speakers

Robert Whitaker (Merkle Science’s Director of Law Enforcement Affairs)

Robert Whitaker is a seasoned law enforcement professional with over two decades of experience in federal, state, and international law enforcement. He now serves as Merkle Science’s Director of Law Enforcement Affairs. With a distinguished career at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and a deep understanding of the cryptocurrency space, Robert will play a pivotal role in advancing our mission to build a safer and more compliant cryptocurrency ecosystem. With a master’s degree in Legal Studies from Texas A&M School of Law and certification as a Bitcoin Professional, Robert brings a comprehensive understanding of both the legal and technical aspects of cryptocurrency.

Connect with Robert here. 

Justus Delp (Merkle Science’s Senior Solution Architect)

Driven by curiosity, Justus Delp pursued an interdisciplinary education combining economics, politics and management allowing him to develop a comprehensive understanding of the international political economy. During his career, he put himself outside his comfort zone to learn how to manage multiple projects across industries and functions. During his tenure in Finance, Chemicals and Tech, he excelled as a relationship and customer success manager serving C-Level Executives in optimizing the value delivered to them whilst improving the customer experience in a data-driven manner.

Throughout this journey, he became truly fascinated by the crypto industry alongside the immense innovation around tokenomics in the DeFi space. He now serves as a Senior Solution Architect at Merkle Science.

Connect with Justus here. 

Mar Gimenez-Aguilar (Halborn’s Lead Security Architect)

Mar Gimenez-Aguilar has a PhD in Computer Science and Technology from Carlos III University of Madrid. She has three publications in high-impact scientific journals about security, blockchain, Ethereum and steganography. She currently works at Halborn as Lead Security Architect, participating in security products development and research.

Connect with Mar here. 

Piotr Cielas (Halborn’s VP of Advisory)

Piotr Cielas manages the Solana practice at Halborn and works exclusively with the blockchain and DeFi space. Originally a full stack software engineer, he moved to cybersecurity and until he joined Halborn he had been a senior cybersecurity consultant in the largest consulting companies in the world. He also lectures in cybersecurity at ThriveDX. Piotr holds several infosec certifications, including OSCP and OSWE and is a co-author of a certified ethical hacking program CEHv11.

Connect with Piotr here. 

André Beganski (Staff Reporter at Decrypt) 

André Beganski became a Staff Reporter at Decrypt after serving as the publication's first intern in 2022. He graduated from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where he studied Business and Economics Reporting while specializing in Data Journalism. 

Read André’s work here and connect with him here. 

The Webinar’s Topics

The basis of the Halborn-Merkle Science webinar will be on the respective data-driven reports of each organization.

Earlier this year, Merkle Science released its 2024 Crypto Hackhub Report, its latest version of its annual flagship research. The report details the biggest trends in the attack vectors, methodologies, and targets of the US$3.3 billion in hacks in 2023. 

Halborn has also released a comprehensive report covering the top 100 DeFi hacks from 2016 to 2023. This report covers key findings relating to targeted chains, vulnerability types, losses by vulnerability type, and more. The full report can be downloaded here. 

Registrants are encouraged to download both reports, so that they have more background on the webinar topic. 

Webinar attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the following topics, all of which are essential to defending their organization from cyber crime. 

• ​Smart Contract Security - Smart contracts are prone to numerous vulnerabilities, including everything from poor access control and logic errors to faulty validation and reentrancy. According to our HackHub report, smart contract attacks made up half of all attacks in 2023, though the value lost to them fell 93.5% from the previous year from$2.6 billion to $179 million.
• ​Private Key Management - This is a tale as old as time: Compromised private keys remain one of the most common root causes for hacks. In fact, according to HackHub, private key compromises accounted for 78% of total value lost in 2023, which was a staggering $2.5 billion. For hot wallets (i.e. those connected to the internet), organizations need to adopt more stringent methods for hot wallet protection, such as stronger encryption, two-factor or multi-signature authentication, and even limiting funds stored in this manner. Organizations need to strongly consider storing private keys in offline, cold wallets to reduce exposure to theft. 
• ​Money Laundering Prevention in DeFi - Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they launder money, evade authorities, and obfuscate their trail on DeFi. For example, some criminals will engage in chain-hopping, which involves rapidly moving funds from blockchain to blockchain, while others will avail of coin mixers, which will pool funds between multiple users, breaking the link between senders and recipients. Organizations need cutting-edge tools to still identify and track criminals in spite of these techniques and tools. 
• ​Cross-Chain Security Challenges - The vast majority of attacks still occur on specific chains: According to Halborn’s report, Ethereum is the most targeted, followed by Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. Despite this popularity, a growing attack vector are cross-chain bridges, which are those that link one blockchain to another. These are prone to various bridge vulnerabilities that can lead to significant loss of funds. 
• ​Incident Response for DeFi Exploits - Despite this range of threats and vulnerabilities, there are well established best practices on how to mitigate them. Companies can conduct security audits, update smart contracts with the latest patches, implement real-time monitoring with blockchain analytics solutions like Tracker that are compatible with smart contracts, and more. 

The most crucial attack vectors and evasion strategies, however, are those that are still emerging and trending upward, such as the use of Coinjoins as well as dApps for token swaps.  

The experts from Merkle Science and Halborn will give special attention to these, so that attendees can remain one step ahead of criminals.

Registrations Now Open for the Merkle Science-Halborn Webinar

Businesses that want to understand the nuances of the biggest hacks over the last few years should attend the October 14 webinar Crypto Hacks in 2024: Have We Truly Learned From Crypto’s All-Time Biggest Hacks?

Attendees will walk away with a greater understanding on how they can shore up cybersecurity for their business, identify suspicious transactions or behavior, and respond efficiently and intelligently to any incident. 

The event will take place on Monday, October 14 at 10 am ET). Register for the webinar here.