Demystifying NFT Promotion and Phishing Scams

The popularity and hype around purchasing digital assets such as art, video, and music in the form of Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has rapidly made them a lucrative investment opportunity, with NFT-based sales surpassing $25B in 2021 alone. However, the volatility and scarcity of NFTs, combined with the general lack of familiarity with the technical aspects of this ecosystem, encourage the spread of several scams. The success of an NFT is majorly impacted by its online virality. There have been sparse reports about scammers emulating this virality by either promoting their fraudulent NFT projects on social media or imitating other popular NFT projects. This paper presents a longitudinal analysis of 439 unique Twitter accounts that consistently promote fraudulent NFT collections through giveaway competitions and 1,028 NFT phishing attacks. Our findings indicate that most accounts interacting with these promotions are bots, which can rapidly increase the popularity of the fraudulent NFT collections by inflating their likes, followers, and retweet counts. This leads to significant engagement from real users, who then proceed to invest in the scams. On the other hand, we identify two novel attack vectors which are utilized by NFT phishing scams to steal funds and digital assets from the victim's wallet. We also identify several gaps in the prevalent anti-phishing ecosystem by evaluating the performance of popular anti-phishing blocklists and security tools against NFT phishing attacks. We utilize our findings to develop a machine learning classifier that can automatically detect NFT phishing scams at scale

Non-fungible tokens (NFTS) and their security challenges

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market has been exploding in the past years. The notion of NFT originated with Ethereum's token standard, which aimed to differentiate each token using distinguishing signals. Tokens of this type can be associated with virtual or digital properties to serve as unique identifiers. Using NFTs Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a new technology gaining traction in the Blockchain industry. In this article, we examine state-of the art NFT systems that have the potential to reshape the market for digital virtual assets. We will assess the security of existing NFT systems and expand on the opportunities and prospective uses for the NFT idea. Finally, we discuss existing research challenges that must be overcome before mass-market penetration may occur. We hope that this paper provides an up-to-date analysis and summary of existing and proposed solutions and projects, making it easier for newcomers to stay current.Fonksuz Belirteç (NFT) pazarı son yıllarda patlama yapıyor. NFT'nin nosyonu Ethereum'un belirteç standardıyla ortaya çıkmıştır ve bu durum, her belirteci ayırt edici sinyaller kullanarak ayırt etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu tipteki belirteçler, benzersiz tanımlayıcılar olarak hizmet vermek için sanal veya dijital özelliklerle ilişkilendirilebilir. NFTS Non-Fungible Token (NFT) kullanmak, Blockchain endüstrisinde yeni bir teknoloji kazanıyor. Bu makalede, dijital sanal varlıklar için pazarı yeniden şekillendirme potansiyeline sahip son teknoloji ürünü NFT sistemlerini inceliyoruz. Mevcut NFT sistemlerinin güvenliğini değerlendirecek ve NFT fikri için fırsatları ve olası kullanımları genişleteceğiz. Son olarak, kitle pazara giriş gerçekleşmeden önce aşılması gereken mevcut araştırma zorluklarını ele alıyoruz. Bu incelemede, mevcut ve önerilen çözüm ve projelerin güncel bir analizi ve özeti sağlanarak, yeni gelenlerin güncel kalmasını kolaylaştırılmasını umuyoruz.No sponso

Connect2NFT : a web-based, blockchain enabled NFT application with the aim of reducing fraud and ensuring authenticated social, non-human verified digital identity

As of 2022, non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, the smart contract powered tokens that represent ownership in a specific digital asset, have become a popular investment vehicle. In 2021, NFT trading reached USD 17.6 billion and entered mainstream media with several celebrities and major companies launching tokens within the space. The rapid rise in popularity of NFTs has brought with it a number of risks and concerns, two of which will be discussed and addressed in this technical paper. Data storage of the underlying digital asset connected to an NFT is held off-chain in most cases and is therefore out of the NFT holders’ control. This issue will be discussed and addressed using a theoretical workflow developed and presented for a system that converges NFTs and verifiable credentials with the aim of storing underlying NFT digital assets in a decentralized manner. The second issue focuses on the rise of NFT infringements and fraud within the overall NFT space. This will be discussed and addressed through the development of a practical application, named “Connect2NFT”. The main functionality of this practical application will enable users to connect their Twitter social media accounts to the NFTs they own, thus ensuring that potential buyers or viewers of the NFT can comprehensively conclude who is the authentic owner of a specific NFT. An individual performance analysis of the proposed solution will be conducted in addition to being compared and evaluated against similar applications. Thorough development, implementation, and testing has been performed in order to establish a practical solution that can be tested and applied to current NFT use cases. The theoretical NFT storage solution is a minor but equally important contribution in comparison.https://www.mdpi.com/journal/mathematicsam2023Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Land Registry on Blockchain

The commercial real estate market is a significant part of the global economy, currently dominated by a small set of firms and organizations that lack transparency. The process of property transfers also requires third party intervention which is expensive. In many countries, the process of title transfers is problematic. We are still in the initial steps of digitization, due to the improvement required in terms of use of technology to represent assets in digital forms. Increase in liquidity of investments and purchases, proper management, documentation as well as ease of access is the future of real estate. Blockchain technologies have the potential to drive these changes as explained in Chapter 1. Blockchain technologies like Ethereum[1] include asset tokenization, and act as immutable and decentralized transaction ledgers. Tokens on the ledger can represent the real estate assets. Particulary, the non-fungible tokens on Ethereum can serve as a representation of transfer of resources. Ethereum grants trusted and distributed smart contracts for token operations. My project is a system for real estate cadastral record keeping and title transfers that uses the ERC-721 specification[2] related to the non-fungible tokens. Testing of the implementation is done using Government records from District of Columbia[3]. Ethereum is a natural choice for this project due to its evolution, an active development community, and many supporting languages and tools that facilitate use of smart contracts. This paper gives the background, implementation details and significance of such a system. Some cost-related and defensive mechanisms offered by the system are discussed later in the report

Authenticated Digital Avatars on Metaverse by Cyber Security Procedures

Metaverse is the  next generation Internet, aims to build a fully immersive, hyper spatiotemporal and self sustaining virtual shared space for humans to play, work, shop and socialize. In metaverse, users are  represented as digital avatars and using identity, user can shuttle across various virtual worlds (i.e., sub-metaverses) to experience a digital life, as well as make digital creations and economic interactions supported by physical infrastructures and the metaverse engine. Virtual reality headsets are the main devices used to access the Metaverse. Privacy and security concerns of the metaverse. The users need to verify their identity to log into the metaverse platforms, and the security of this phase becomes vital. In this paper, the user authentication methods such as Information-based authentication, biometric based authentication, and multi-model methods are reviewed and compared in terms of users security but in some cases these methods are failed to secure from cyber attacks. In this paper, we proposed,Token-based authentication method to enhance the security for the users to access and work on  the virtual environment

Navigating the Non-Fungible Token

$91.8 million,$69 million, and $52.7 million. These are the amounts associated with the three most sought after Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) sold in 2021. Although NFTs were first created in 2014, 2021 saw a massive rise in their global popularity. In fact, Google reported that in 2021, “How to buy an NFT?” was one of its most searched questions. NFTs can alternatively represent a collectible, a financial instrument, or a permanent record associated with a person, physical or digital object, or data—each presenting an entirely distinct set of legal issues. The lack of governmental expertise in emerging technologies accompanied by the shortage of regulatory guidance has created a frustrating environment for innovators. Despite being one of the fastestgrowing industries in the world, there is a remarkable deficit in legal scholarship regarding these devices. NFTs, with their attendant blockchain and smart contract technologies, can create new paradigms around ownership and identification and inspire entirely new business models. In addition to clarifying what NFTs are, this Article seeks to fill the gap in the literature by analyzing how the specific use of an NFT implicates different areas of the law. Examining the way NFTs function in sectors ranging from fine arts to finance, this Article suggests how tokenization law and policy must advance to leverage the incredible opportunities that NFTs present