"Privacy is hygiene," says Vitalik Buterin after bank data leak

Source: PortaldoBitcoin Original Title: “Privacy is hygiene,” says Vitalik Buterin after bank data leak Original Link:

Bank customer data exposed in cyber attack

Customer data from major U.S. banks, including JPMorgan, Citi, and Morgan Stanley, may have been exposed in a cyberattack on the mortgage technology company SitusAMC, which led the Ethereum network to argue about privacy mobilizing.

The breach resulted from unauthorized access to SitusAMC's systems, which confirmed that a malicious agent had extracted data related to several large financial institutions.

The exposed data included “accounting records and legal contracts,” as well as “certain data related to some of our clients' clients,” while the scope, nature, and extent of the breach are still under investigation, said the company.

Vitalik Buterin on privacy as hygiene

The breach led Vitalik Buterin to argue that privacy should be treated as a basic digital “hygiene” rather than something optional.

“Privacy is not a feature. Privacy is hygiene,” he said in response to the incident.

Ethereum and privacy

Vitalik Buterin's response refers to a broader argument he has been developing this year, in which he defines privacy as a basic requirement for digital systems, rather than a mere complement.

In an April essay, he outlined a path for Ethereum to support stealth addresses, selective disclosure, and zero-knowledge tools at the application level, aiming to reduce the type of structural data exposure observed in both traditional finance and public blockchains.

“Calling privacy 'hygiene' is a useful restart,” said Shiv Shankar, CEO of a zero-knowledge computing company. Shankar added that privacy “should be in the same category as patching servers or rotating keys: routine, non-negotiable, and integrated into the infrastructure; it should not be a premium feature added later.”

In October, the Ethereum Foundation launched a new cluster focused on the theme and released initial details about Kohaku, a privacy-centric browser wallet and software development kit, developed by Nicolas Consigny and Buterin.

Privacy as a principle, and then as technology

This shift in focus occurs at a time when privacy, both as a principle and as a set of technologies created to maintain it, has attracted renewed attention in major retail networks.

Ethereum is enhancing protocol tools alongside ongoing work on new layer one blockchains for privacy; Bitcoin is working on Taproot-enabled updates and wallet-based approaches; Solana is consolidating around the Light Protocol following the closure of previous projects.

“Privacy by default ensures that everyone automatically benefits from strong cryptographic protections, without needing to understand complex tools or make conscious privacy decisions for each transaction,” said Quinten van Welzen, head of strategy and communications for a layer one blockchain focused on the topic.

Attention has also turned to Zcash (ZEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency designed to allow users to choose between transparent transactions and fully protected transactions that hide the sender, recipient, and amount using zero-knowledge proofs. Last week, a publicly traded treasury company bought more ZEC, raising its shares by 469% in the last month.

However, privacy as a principle has been present in cryptocurrencies since their early days, especially in the context of their relationship with the traditional financial system.

“Banks should be trustworthy to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with a tiny fraction in reserve,” wrote Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, in 2009. “We have to trust them with our privacy, trust that they won't allow identity thieves to drain our accounts.”