Puerto Rico’s Department of Economic Development and Trade (DDEC) recently launched a Blockchain Advisory Council, reportedly to “attract and develop companies based on blockchain technology,” according to local news outlet El Nuevo Dia.
The move was announced by the island’s secretary of economic development and commerce, Manuel Laboy Rivera, during the Blockchain Unbound conference in San Juan. The advisory council will comprise of members of both the private and public sector, including Rivera.
It will also include the government’s chief innovation officer (CIO) Luis Arocho, its commissioner of Financial Institutions George Joyner, and a number of blockchain industry entrepreneurs who recently moved to Puerto Rico.
El Nuevo Dia, citing sources close to the agency, reports the advisory will unofficially serve as a “filter” to distinguish legitimate blockchain projects that help solve the island’s problems, from projects that don’t hold any value.
This, as recently “blockchain” has become a buzzword companies take advantage of. As covered by CCN, Long Island Iced Tea’s shares surged 300% after it rebranded to Long Blockchain.
The news outlet’s source stated:
“[Blockchain] is becoming a ‘catchphrase’ in the same way that many companies were previously mentioning “cloud” solutions. The government is very careful about which projects to support.”
Rivera further revealed that the government, through the Blockchain Advisory Council, will develop the best possible regulations and legal framework to further support blockchain businesses. As a US commonwealth, the island offers entrepreneurs the same protections given by the US federal government.
These entrepreneurs flocked to Puerto Rico after the country’s infrastructure was decimated by Hurricane Maria back in September, at about the same time most cryptocurrencies saw their value skyrocket. The island’s government has offered entrepreneurs attractive tax incentives, in a bid to boost its depressed economy.
One of these incentives can be found within the Internal Revenue Code, and is called Act 22. It reportedly allows non-residents to not pay taxes on long-term capital gains. Speaking to CNBC, Laboy stated:
“Before the natural disaster, the hurricane, we were already targeting Puerto Rico to become a world leader — not only a regional leader, but a world leader — in export services and technology. That was part of the vision that Gov. (Ricardo) Rossello has for Puerto Rico.”
One of the first entrepreneurs to move to the island was Tether co-founder Brock Pierce, who together with other businessmen are creating what’s been dubbed a “crypto utopia” in the region.
As covered by CCN, research recently found Tether itself may have a banking relationship with Puerto Rico-based Noble Bank. If true, this would put to rest rumors that Tether is a Ponzi scheme using its USDT tokens to pump bitcoin’s price.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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MANUEL LABOY RIVERA, PUERTO RICO
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AUTHOR
Francisco Memoria
Francisco is a cryptocurrency writer who's in love with technology and focuses on helping people see the value digital currencies have. Twitter: https://twitter.com/FranciscoMemor
BITCOIN WALLETS MARCH 21, 2018 23:49
15-Year-Old Hacks Hardware Crypto Wallet Ledger
Hardware wallet Ledger Nano S had a break in – teenage security expert, Saleem Rashid, found an issue with the “tamper-free” wallet. The story began on Nov. 2017, when Rashid reported a flaw to Ledger CTO, Nicolas Bacca, which could allow attackers to steal funds from wallet users.
Rashid had observed that the microcontroller employed in the wallet was not secure. While it allowed the use of buttons and displays to input data, it was connected as a proxy to the Secure Element (SE). The latter contained private keys which meant that a hacker could trick the SE in different ways. Here’s how: retailers and resellers could change microcontroller’s firmware which, now compromised, could verify its ‘identity’ to the SE. He further explained that the attacker could control the user interface and use their malicious code to set randomness to zero and add a recovery seed of their own choice. Rashid chose the word ‘abandon’ to prove his point in an uploaded video. Now that the attacker had the mnemonic phrase, they could get the private keys easily.
After Rashid sent the research to Ledger, he saw that the flaw wasn’t taken seriously by the team. However, they did publish a firmware update on Mar. 6, which was heavily criticized by Rashid. He posted his opinions on Twitter, since he believed that the team should either have posted it as a critical update or disguised it so that hackers didn’t get time to use this trick.
Panic spread among users, who took to Reddit to discuss their next move. Eric Larchevêque, Ledger’s CEO, replied to one such post saying it was “a massive FUD”, and that Rashid was trying to bring attention to himself, when the problem was clearly not high-priority. “Saleem got visibly upset when we didn’t communicate as “critical security update” and decided to share his opinion on the subject,” wrote Larchevêque.
On Mar. 20, Ledger published another update that explained three problems discovered by bounty program researchers: Timothée Isnard, Saleem Rashid and Sergei Volokitin. Interestingly, Rashid denied this statement because signing Ledger’s Bounty Program Agreement would disallow him for publishing a technical report, which he clearly did on the very same day. As for the new updates, Rashid explained that he wasn’t allowed to receive the ‘release candidate’ by the company, but he believed that the new fixes were not completely free from hacker attacks.
“Is it truly possible to use a combination of timing and “difficult to compress” firmware to achieve security in this model?”, wrote Rashid. He received support from cryptographer Matthew Green, who explained in a lengthy Twitter thread how the teenager was able to break through Ledger’s secure tactic.
The teenager, who lives in U.K., previously uncovered a problem in cryptocurrency hardware wallet TREZOR One. The issue was resolved with a healthy communication between both parties. SatoshiLabs CEO, Marek Palatinus, even praised Rashid for his work, “His out-of-the-box thinking and creative approach help us to make an even more secure product.”
Featured image from Ledger.
POSTED IN: BITCOIN WALLETS, NEWS
TAGS: LEDGER, SALEEM RASHID
AUTHOR
Habiba Tahir
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Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Writer
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