Help Seems Nearby For Preventing Web3 Cyber Attacks

With the recent raising of $9 million by the crypto startup, Hypernative, a remedy for emerging web3 cyber attacks seems imminent. 

Based on recent revelations by co-founder and CEO, Gal Sagie, Hypernative, a crypto security-focused startup, has raised $9 million in seed funding as it emerges from stealth.

The duo of boldstart ventures and IBI tech fund have championed this funding round, with strategic investments from Nexo, Alchemy, Blockdaemon, CMT Digital, Nexo, Borderless, and angel investors. 

Hypernative was started by Sagie and Dan Caspi, who doubles as Hypernative’s CTO. Having both worked in places like IBM, Google, and Microsoft, the co-founders boast great backgrounds in cloud infrastructure, building large-scale distributed systems, and security.

“We created Hypernative early last year when we saw huge amounts of money getting stolen or phished or scammed in crypto,” Sagie said.

“We saw huge gaps between tools that existed and money being invested, so we wanted to create something to help prevent [attacks].”

Tracing How Web3 Cyber Attacks Started

An expert in cybersecurity, Christian Seifert, recently disclosed that there's a likelihood of end users in the cryptocurrency space facing numerous unreported attacks. 

To promote the widespread adoption of web3 technologies, it is necessary to address these security concerns thereby increasing end-user trust in these systems.

While the quartet of phishing, vulnerabilities, malware, and centralization appear possible web3 cyber poisons, Seifert, who is currently a researcher-in-residence for the Forta Network, a real-time detection network for security and operational monitoring of the blockchain, revealed that the Web3 space is filled with attacks targeting protocols. 

Worse still is the fact that only mostly the biggest hacks get reported (e.g., the Ronin bridge attack).

These cybercriminals often end up targeting Web3 companies just to steal the private keys associated with their protocols' addresses. 

They usually employ phishing attacks or exploit inherent vulnerabilities thereby allowing attackers to gain control of these addresses. 

So the remedy lies in updating these protocols as soon as the industry becomes aware of these vulnerabilities.

Hypernative's Launch

Last September, the Hypernative team launched its first product, Pre-Cog, which is a platform for monitoring on and off-chain data sources and predicting threats before they occur. 

Users have been helped to save “tens of millions” of dollars since the launch according to Sagie said. 

The startup concentrates on “building detection early” and manually connecting its tools through customer workflows, Sagie said. 

Hypernative's ideal client base includes hedge funds, traders, asset managers, and market makers who interact with crypto to blockchains and protocols.

He added. “We’re doing detection beforehand,” Sagie noted.

“A lot of incidents alerted [users] within minutes or hours before an attack happened so we’ve helped prevent attacks through alerts.”

In the future, Hypernative aims to build prevention workflows that give “end-to-end systems that mitigate risk without doing anything,” Sagie added. 

“From my experience hackers don’t sleep,” Sagie said. “They don’t care if it’s a bull market or bear market. Where there’s money and opportunities, they go.”

The crypto industry needs more tools to help prevent hacks before they transpire, so “there’s a big opportunity” to improve the space, Sagie said. 

“Hackers enjoy when there’s risk and volatility in the market and leverage that,” he added. “It’s a problem we need to solve.”