Home prices show hints of downshift
After a stretch of roaring price hikes, Las Vegas’ housing market seems to be tapping the brakes.
Price growth is cooling down, sales have slowed, and the industry’s biggest trade group in town is dialing back expectations that prices will reach their pre-recession peak this year.
By all indications, Las Vegas is still a seller’s market and not undergoing a wrenching change, and prices continue to rise faster than the national average. But collectively, the shifts could give buyers some relief.
Southern Nevada home prices have been rising at one of the fastest clips in the country this year amid
HOMES Increase in the median sales price of previously owned singlefamily homes in the Las Vegas area in July. Homes that were sold in July that were on the market for 30 days or fewer. Increase in the median sales price of previously owned singlefamily homes in the United States in July.
that prevent or limit a user from accessing their systems or data until a ransom is paid.
But as companies boost their defenses against ransomware and as more individuals venture into the cryptocurrency space, criminals are trying new avenues to crypto riches, said Cisco’s Artisom Holub, senior security research analyst, and Austin Mcbride, threat analytics researcher at Cisco.
Criminals are effectively using Google Ads to trick individuals into accessing their phishing sites, which look nearly identical to popular crypto exchanges such as Binance. com or Blockchain.info but have a slightly difference address, Holub
and Mcbride told an audience of several dozen at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.
The criminals are then able to capture login details for the real sites and steal cryptocurrencies.
Individuals and small companies accepting cryptocurrencies are most at risk, they said. Small companies, such as startups, often do not have the money for strong cybersecurity protection.
Cybercriminals often use both crypto phishing or cryptojacking, Mcbride said, and attacks will increase as the popularity of cryptocurrencies expands.
“It ebbs and flows, if the (cryptocurrency) market is down, phishing is going to go up. They will grow together but at different rates,” he said.
Criminals are also seeking out
lesser known cryptocurrencies, known as alt coins, for malicious activity such as pump and dump, Holub and Mcbride said.
In a pump and dump, cryptocriminals drive up the price of an alt coin by hundreds or thousands of percentage points and then exchange it for a more popular cryptocurrency, like bitcoin, before it collapses.
Cisco is one of about 300 cybersecurity firms exhibiting at Black Hat. The annual conference attracts more than 17,000 cybersecurity professionals to Las Vegas for six days of training and briefings on the latest threats and products to counter them. Black Hat runs through Thursday.
Contact Todd Prince at 702-3830386 or tprince@reviewjournal.com. Follow @toddprincetv on Twitter.