China’s Tencent Warns of Bug in NEO’s Blockchain That Allows Hackers to Steal Tokens Remotely
Tencent’s Security Joint Lab has notified users of the Neo (NEO) blockchain of a potential bug that allows hackers to remotely steal tokens native to the blockchain. The vulnerability affects the popular Gas (GAS) tokens. The team notified the crypto and blockchain community via the popular micro-blogging website of Weibo.
The notification has been translated by Google and reads as follows:
Blockchain re-explosive money crisis! @腾讯湛泸Lab Monitoring the famous blockchain project NEO (corresponding to the digital currency “small ant coin”) has the risk of remote piracy.
When a user starts the NEO network node with the default configuration and opens the wallet, the digital currency may be remotely stolen.
Tencent Security Zhanyi Lab has submitted a risk warning to the NEO development community, and reminded NEO node maintainers and “small ant coin” holders to pay attention to wallet security, update the client version in time, and pay attention to abnormal transfer behavior.
How To Avoid Attacks:
The team at the security arm of Tencent went on to advise the NEO community on how to avoid attacks. They advised the following actions to prevent the loss of tokens:
- Upgrade to the highest version of NEO-CLI client program
- Avoid using remote RPC function, modify the address of BindAddress in the configuration file to 127.0.0.1
- If you have to use remote RPC functions, change the RPC port number, enable Https-based port of JSON-RPC-based interface, or set up a firewall, etc. to protect the security node
About NEO
Nicknamed ‘The Ethereum of China’, NEO is the next generation smart economy platform. The project aims to digitize assets and automate the process of managing them using smart contracts. With blockchain technology, the digitization of assets can be decentralized, secure, traceable, transparent and free from middlemen.
NEO is currently ranked 18th on Coinmarketcap with a market capitalization of $523 Million and valued at $8.06 per coin at the moment of writing this. At the peak of the crypto bull run of last December to February this year, NEO was valued at $191 leading many crypto traders to conclude it was the hardest hit by the ban on online crypto trading in China.