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INTRODUCTION

Good day my sweet esteemed steemians. It's nice to be in this week's contest after an awesome lecture by professor @gbenga. The crypto knowledge seems to be getting more interesting week after week. This week i had to rush go to the lecture hall to see what course we had to learn and the assignment given. Well the professor really did good in his educative format. Below is my answer to his homework task:

• Make A Post About A Security Problem With Cryptocurrency And Share A Personal Experience if possible.

Cryptocurrencies are fundamentally the same as e-money, like WebMoney or Pay-Pal and this makes it similar with same problems as classic e-payment systems. Moreover, the same principles are responsible for some risks unique to cryptocurrencies.

SPOOFING PAYMENT INFORMATION & PHISHING

Let's start with regular problems such as plain old theft. For example : Sometime ago I was transferring money to a friend then I copied his exact wallet address, but malware replaced the address in the clipboard with another one. I wasn't vigilant or doublechecked the address after copying it (this happens to most users especially when the address is a long jumble of characters) Or take Phishing for another example : when I was still learning about cryptocurrency with my bitcoin wallet, ethereum wallet etc; I was tricked into going to a phishing website where I could upload my cryptowallets and enter my password and of cause you should know how it ended. However, users of a traditional bank system can get into same trouble with cyberthieves but in a traditional system there is always a fairly good opportunity of canceling the transfer.

In the case of cryptocurrencies, you could try to complain to the United Nations that's if you have the time or connections to do so. Whatsoever happens in blockchain stays in blockchain. Another experience: sometime ago I was trying to transfer ethereum to a friend and I forgot the last digit of the address wasn’t copied, the money disappeared into thin. Tho that error is not witnessed to Bitcoin because its system has an built-in address validation.

Loss Of A Wallet File

Loss or theft of a wallet. Most users store their cryptocurrency wallet files on their hardware devices like computers, phones, etc; which can be stolen using malware or the wallet can get lost when the hard disk crashes. This was my experience with my first bitcoin account.

INSECURE ICOS

Investing in projects associated with a blockchain or cryptocurrencies became very popular amongst cryptocurrency holders in the 2017. This type of fundraising is called an ICO "Initial Coin Offering". Cryptocurrencies being used has made it easy to raise outrageous amounts of funds with nothing required than an Internet connection. About 1.7 billion dollars has been raised through ICOs in 2017 but the problem here is that the cryptocurrency market yet is not regulated by any means, there are no risk check mechanisms, no
guarantee for return on investments. Honestly speaking, someone having an idea doesn’t mean the idea is good or even feasible or that the author will actually spend the money on implementing it rather than on paying the director. Mostly, he could simply hijack the money, knowing it’s not that easy to track down and deanonymize a payee on the cryptocurrency market.

SPOOFING A USER ADDRESS

Most times, a money-grabbing scheme is even easier. Gathering of funds in an ICO opens at a specified time & closes when the required amount has been collected. The collection address is posted directly on the project website when it opens. I learnt sometime last 2 years during one ICO, a hacker got access to the project website and as soon as collection opened, he swapped the address with his own and within an hour the website was opened, over 2,000 participants already had thrown in over 8 million dollars before the address was alarmed as fake but even that didn’t stop the blockhead crypto investors, cause so many them continued to transfer money to the same fake address whereas the hacker got extra 2 million dollars that day because he spoofed a user address.

• Conclusion
  Well, there are a lot of security problems in Cryptocurrency in as much as it's decentralized and has it's advantages. That won't stop the cyber hijackers to keep searching and reaping off money from people's wallets by all means..
  Thank you Professor @gbenga for the assignment.
  Special thanks to my mentors @focusnow @talktofaith @ngoenyi @bright-obias