Crypto Cyber Security

Enhance resilience and defeat attacks

The growth in popularity of cryptocurrencies and their typically high transaction volumes have made cryptocurrency exchanges very attractive targets for malicious actors. Crypto exchanges present opportunities for massive financial theft performed through quick, anonymous transactions. Global crime groups as well as nation-state actors have taken notice, and are continuously targeting these exchanges with increasingly sophisticated, tailored attacks.

In recent years, Sygnia has responded to some of the largest cyber attacks against crypto exchanges. Sygnia has developed a deep understanding of how crypto attacks unfold and the threat-actor tactics that are typically used. We leverage our experience to help crypto exchanges implement secure design principles, enhance their security resilience, and defeat attacks.

Sygnia’s crypto security offering consists of Sygnia services that have been tuned to address the unique security challenges and threat-actor tactics that crypto exchanges face. Our services include secure exchange architecture design, posture enhancement, product assessment, red teaming, code review, incident response, and threat hunting.

SECURE EXCHANGE & ARCHITECTURE DESIGN

Secure Exchange Architecture Design is built to assist organizations that are looking to build or transform their cryptocurrency exchange architecture with security as a central consideration. We review key design elements such as network interconnectivity and controls, identity architecture and principles, governance, and compliance management. The outcome is a tailored architecture design built to eliminate single points of failure, ensure dual-control of key processes, and enforce the principal of least privilege across the environment.

CODE REVIEW

A security code review of crypto (e.g. smart contracts) and crypto exchange components is performed using static code analysis coupled with a manual review by Sygnia experts. The security code review focuses on identifying vulnerabilities introduced through insecure coding practices, utilization of vulnerable methods and libraries, as well as identification of complex application logic flaws.

POSTURE ENHANCEMENT

Sygnia’s extensive experience helping crypto exchanges contain and remediate severe security breaches has provided us with deep insights into the risks that crypto exchanges face and the specific threat-actor tactics that are likely to be used against them. Sygnia leverages this experience along with a highly structured approach  current cyber posture, recommend significant, quick-win improvements, and accelerate achievement of longer-term strategic security objectives.

INCIDENT RESPONSE

When responding to a cyber attack against a cryptocurrency exchange, speed and accuracy are critical. Sygnia leverages a parallel response across multiple workstreams to accelerate attacker containment and eradication. Sygnia’s response methodology enables the identification of unique blockchain patterns associated with specific attackers, and this knowledge is also leveraged post-event to ensure that additional malicious activities and re-entry attempts are detected and blocked immediately. Sygnia’s Incident Response Retainer (IRR) is available to provide a client-specific IR activation playbook that saves valuable time when an incident occurs.

PRODUCT ASSESSMENT

Exchange components are evaluated for security best practices by utilizing hands-on adversary simulations. A white/grey security testing approach is applied to identify and test possible attacker entry points, as well as exploitable vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across select components or across the entire exchange ecosystem, including infrastructure, client-facing and administrative components.

THREAT HUNTING

Sygnia has responded to numerous attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges that were characterized by a stealthy and continuous draining of funds from exchange wallets. Detecting such attacks with standard monitoring tools poses a problem; when attacks are detected and prevented, attackers have the time and resources to regroup and try different tactics until they are able to successfully evade existing detections. To flip this asymmetry between attackers and exchanges, Sygnia performs tailored, proactive threat hunting to identify dormant or stealthy threats in exchange environments and ensure their comprehensive eradication.

Often described as a cyber security Delta Force… (Sygnia)
has developed a reputation for speed and decisiveness in responding to attacks and helping Fortune 100 companies build their cyber resilience.

Forbes