Humble Headbands & Attacking Fintech Startups 🎩

How they do it: 

• The attackers subtly abuse the trust of employees working at targeted companies by posing as businessmen or VCs and sending them a malware-laced “business files” with remote surveillance functions. 
• They use the malware surveillance program to then monitor financial transactions of the compromised users and steal their cryptocurrency.
• Should a potential target use a Chrome extension like Metamask to manage crypto wallets, the adversary stealthily moves to locally replace the main component of the extension with a fake version that alerts the operators every time a large transfer is kicked off to another account.
• In the final phase, the malware injects a malicious code into the target computer to divert funds and essentially drain the target account in one move. 

Once North Korea has gained custody of the funds, they begin a careful laundering process to cover up and cash out through mixers to obscure the trail.

In the last year and a half, central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lacing the pockets of billionaires. Oxfam International in its recent report "Inequality Kills" noted that the wealth of the world's 10 richest men more than doubled to $1.5 trillion from $700 billion from March 2020 to November 2021. That's a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day. 

According to Oxfam's calculations, a one-time 99% windfall tax on the gains of these 10 richest men would be enough to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines for the whole world. There'd also be enough to fund other public-work projects, such as universal healthcare and social protection, while still leaving these men $8 billion better off than they were before the pandemic.

If you had more data on your brain waves, heart rate, sleep, and other bodily functions, would you be able to better optimize the machine that is you?
Can we use technology to provoke experiences that will make people lastingly altruistic? If we democratize spiritual insights so they become accessible faster to lots more people — not just those who can afford to spend decades meditating in a cave somewhere — can that help our species evolve?

Muse is a neurofeedback tool for training yourself to regulate your brain waves and maybe know yourself a little better. 

Neurofeedback, as research shows, has the potential to help people struggling with conditions like ADHD and PTSD. And Muse is one of several startups now selling neurofeedback devices. At $245 a pop, its headbands are already accessible to consumers at stores like Walmart or Best Buy.

The aim: to make you a more enlightened version of yourself. 

How does it work:

• You start by placing the headband on your forehead. 
• Its built-in EEG sensors read your brain waves as you meditate. Some brain waves are associated with focused attention and others are associated with mind-wandering and stress 
• Muse’s algorithm picks them apart in real time and gives you different warning signals on the phone app depending on what your mind is doing. For example, when your thoughts are racing, your phone will play loud rainstorms. That’s your cue to go, like, ‘Oh shit! I’m thinking about the grocery list again! Back to meditation!’ When your thoughts are calmer, you hear quieter weather. And when you manage to sustain a deep calm for a while, you hear the rewarding sound of birds chirping.