Scandal between UCL and IOTA fund

University College London, better known as UCL, has officially cut all ties with the IOTA Foundation in response to legal threats against cybersecurity researchers who discovered a vulnerability in the system's blockchain.

Patrick McCorry, a security researcher at UCL's Cryptocurrency and Contracts Initiative, published an official UCK statement emphasizing that researchers should not be subject to prosecution for disclosing their work. He also added that all colleges and universities should follow UCL's example and cut ties with the foundation, which threatens researchers with legal action. 

From UCL's official statement:“The UCL Blockchain Research Center is no longer a partner of the IOTA Foundation. Due to recent events, we once again show our support for independent cybersecurity researchers, who are essential to the existence of decentralized blockchain technology. We find the foundation's legal threats to be outrageous." 

Threats

In February, graduate student Ethan Heilman, along with a team of researchers from the DCI, published a report describing a flaw in IOTA hash functions called Curl. The report, titled “IOTA Vulnerability Report: Cryptanalysis of the Curl Hash Function that Allows Practical Counterfeiting of IOTA Tokens,” reported that the encryption used by IOTA developers is vulnerable to forged signatures and potentially theft of funds.

Almost immediately after the report was published, IOTA co-founder Sergei Ivancheglo took to social media to report the that the foundation's legal team is already working to file lawsuits against the researchers.

Dan Guido, CEO of the Trail of Bits think tank, said the emails sent by the IOTA foundation were disgraceful and lacked maturity and motivation to improve its own protocol:

“I think these emails were extremely disgraceful to the IOTA foundation. They seemed to be trying to convince us that the project lacked proper technical leadership, or It’s just maturity to work on your own product.”

Rick Dudley, a blockchain researcher from New York, also expressed his opinion: “What they did in general was provide some sources and pieces of paper that describe only part of the protocol - a secret. This is fundamentally contrary to the idea of ​​blockchain and open systems. This is ridiculous..."

In response to their statements, Ivancheglo replied that the IOTA report only covers one side of the issue, and that he does not agree that the foundation should not sue the researchers.

IOTA Foundation founder David Sonnebø also published his own statement: “I agree with you one hundred percent [c Ivancheglo]. I condemn such actions, and the IOTA Foundation has condemned them many times before. Another unacceptable action I consider is Patrick McCorry's desire to mislead people for the sake of self-promotion.

“One of the side effects of the promising distributed ledger technology is the constant struggle of projects for profit. The entire crypto space is filled with this, and more serious problems fade into the background,” added Sonnebø.

What this scandal will lead to and how it will affect the IOTA rate we will find out in the near future.