Searching for a Cryptocurrency Security Standard

Bitstamp’s recent hacking woes suggest that security in the bitcoin world seems to be getting worse, rather than better. Whether it’s down to external attacks, or internal irregularities as alleged at Mt Gox, it’s clear that something has to change.
When bitcoin wallet Blockchain experienced its ownsecurity problems in December, decentralised cryptography expert Emin Gn Sirer noted that the standard security practices among technology companies would not stand up in the bitcoin world.
Too much was at stake, he said. Social media companies may hold pictures of your pets, but your bitcoin account holds something more valuable. It seems reasonable that the cryptocurrency world should be held to a higher level of account than, say, Twitter (although a hacked Twitter account can still have pretty devastating results).
“We certainly need better security practices, as we have seen from the constant stream of spectacular failures of bitcoin exchanges,” he told CoinDesk more recently. “These services have been failing at the rate of one major failure every two months, leaving many distraught people in their paths.”

This post was published at Coin Desk on January 25, 2015.

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