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Permalink Reply by guest_blog on March 28, 2013 at 1:11pm

Bitcoin miners hit back at cyber-thieves

By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

The value of each bitcoin has almost tripled in about a month

Continue reading the main story

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Cyber-thieves are attempting to cash in on the rising value of the bitcoin virtual currency.

Bitcoins have almost tripled in value in a month. In late February one bitcoin was worth £22 ($33) but now each one sells for about £60 ($90).

Thieves who run networks of hijacked PCs are increasingly using these machines to create or "mine" the coins.

But bitcoin miners say thieves will struggle to keep up, as coin-generating technology becomes more sophisticated.

Computer cash

As a virtual currency, bitcoins depend on a wide network of closely connected computers to log who holds the coins and where they are spent.

That network also shares information about who is "mining" the coins.

Mining involves solving a hard mathematical problem and miners typically use large numbers of computers to speed up the number crunching involved.

"Botnet mining is fundamentally theft of private property, illegal and unethical," Jeff Garzik, a bitcoin developer told the BBC, adding that bitcoin miners had battled botnets for years, seeing them as a "cost and a burden" they just had to deal with.

Many cyber-thieves who control botnets, large networks of home PCs compromised with a virus, were using them as a dedicated mining pool in a bid to generate bitcoins for themselves, said Derek Manky, senior security strategist at Fortinet.

The operators of one of the biggest current botnets, known as ZeroAccess, had recently ramped up their efforts to use machines they control to mine bitcoins, he said, adding that millions of infected PCs were unwittingly enrolled in the criminal network.

"ZeroAccess has employed an affiliate model," he said. "They pay other people to install malware for them."

The operators of ZeroAccess were making so much money that they were paying high prices for each infection. Current rates ran at about $100 (£65) for every 1,000 infections, said Mr Manky.

As well as mining bitcoins, PCs enrolled in ZeroAccess were also being used to poison search results - to cause users to unwittingly click on booby-trapped web pages - or fraudulently click on adverts to generate revenue.

"ZeroAccess has been extremely profitable," said Mr Manky.

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Permalink Reply by Meriem K. Peillet on March 29, 2013 at 11:50am

The bit coin is an international internet currency exchange system based on an open-source peer to peer network. I'm sure you can do some research yourself and find out more about it, so I'm going to tell you the more mysterious parts of it.

It was created by Satoshi Nakamoto. The problem is that nobody knows who this Nakamoto is. There had been no cypher or hacker on the internet with his pseudonym prior to the release of Bitcoin. He is completely unknown on internet activist and hacker forums. As a matter of fact, Bitcoin was the recipient of a MASSIVE hacker operation to try hack the server and break the code, in order to find out who the creator is based on how it was compiled. They failed. The server is protected by over 31,000 lines of encryption coding. It's massive, close to the sophistication of the World Bank encryption system.

 

The venture started some time ago when Nakamoto started posting on software-developer forums his plan for Bitcoin as outlined in an original proposal (http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) asking for high-skilled software developers to aid him in realizing the project. The fact that his posts were consistently written in flawless English and utilized British idioms and expression suggests that he is not Japanese, or a Japanese with English (NOT American) as his/her native language. 

 

A writer for The New Yorker did some research which led him to the Crypto 2011 conference. At the Crypto 2011 conference, the key annual scholarly meeting on cryptology, there were nine attendees from the UK and Ireland. According to Davis, six of them were dismissive of bitcoin and two others had no programming capability. That left one person: 23-year-old Michael Clear, a former student of Trinity College in Dublin who has published a paper on peer-to-peer networks and was the top student in CS at Trinity in 2008. Clear has, however, denied the claims (https://www.scss.tcd.ie/~clearm/bitcoin.html) and during a voice interview when asked if he was Nakamoto he answered “No...But even if I was I wouldn’t tell you.”

 

Another likely candidate, which was actually also suggested by Michael Clear is the Finnish programmer Vili Lehdonvirta PhD (Econ. Soc), MSc (Tech). Adjunct Professor (Docent) of Economic Sociology, University of Turku. Associate Director, LSE Innovation Co-Creation Lab. Visiting Fellow, LSE Asia Research Centre (http://vili.lehdonvirta.com/) who has both the programming knowledge and insight into economics necessary to have created the system. The problem is that he has never shown interest in peer to perr networks and he is too much in the light for people to have missed signs that would point at him. Additionally, he also denied the claims.

 

So, people have started looking more into who controls the Bitcoin trade and it turns out that 80% of the Bitcoin exchange is administered through a company known as MtGox. The parent company is called "Mutumsigillum" and is based in Delaware, which is a tax haven within the U.S. In essence, when sending money to MtGox, it passes through Mutum Sigillum LCC, which is pretty much a money laundering front to hide huge sums of money from the Japanese authorities (where the company is based) and the Hong Kong authorities, where MtGox has its main bank account.

 

http://www.mutumsigillum.com <---fake site owned by MtGox

2915 OGLETOWN ROAD, # 1085 — NEWARK, DE 19713 <--fake US address MtGox USA proof of address is fraud

Fake Japanese address MtGox Japan proof of address is fraud!

http://whois.domaintools.com/mutumsigillum.com

DOMAIN: MUTUMSIGILLUM.COM

RSP: KalyHost

URL: http://www.kalyhost.com/

created-date: 2008-05-10 11:59:42

updated-date: 2012-03-30 08:32:16

registration-expiration-date: 2017-05-10 11:59:42

owner-organization: K.K. Tibanne Privacy

owner-name: mutumsigillum c722cc5f-4b05

owner-street: Fleur Tsuzuki 102

owner-city: Kugayama 5-24-30

owner-state: Tokyo-to, Suginami-ku

owner-zip: 168-0082

owner-country: JP

owner-phone: +81.345501529

Who own this Japanese address?

The address is a virtual office from http://www.executivecentre.com.hk/location/shibuya_cerulean_tower-t...

Who own the fake US address?

http://www.phmcgpe.com/ (PHMC GPE LLC)

 

PhMC Gpe LLC Philippe MAILLE 200 E Delaware avenue NEWARK, Delaware 19711 United States Phone: +1.3395461077 Fax..: Email:

Additionally, there have been concerns that in order to become a part of the MtGox exchange system, you have to provide a bunch of personal details, including a scan of your identity document, which could very well be utilized for market analysis and personal monitoring. In essence, your information is sold to other companies that pay for it, or to the government authorities that ask for it. It is ironic since the self-stated initial intent of the system was to create a currency that would be "independent of banks and politicians".

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Permalink Reply by TheLasersShadow on March 29, 2013 at 1:46pm

I hear you Meriem but bitcoin is open source so it really doesn't matter who Satoshi Nakamoto is. As far as MtGox goes you don't have use their services but they are the biggest. Coinbase.com is new and provides the same services as MtGox, worth a try. Anyone can create a website like MtGox and there are a LOT out there to choose from.

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Permalink Reply by truth on March 29, 2013 at 7:11pm

interesting comment/link here http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/bitcoin-mythology-red-herring...

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Permalink Reply by TheLasersShadow on March 29, 2013 at 7:33pm

from above link - "Bitcoin has apparently increased in price by 2000% in two years; does anyone reading this believe this trend will continue?" Yes I do.

"Bitcoin is also not anonymous" It can be If you know what your doing, most don't.

"you are severely limited in terms of what you can spend your bitcoins on" this use to be the case but people don't get into bitcoin so they can go shopping with it ... unless that shopping is for drugs, VPN's, servers, pre-paid credit cards, burner phones and other black market items.

The point of bitcoin is to dodge government, period. Dodging government is going to become more and more necessary in the coming years bitcoins usefulness is going to grow thus the demand and value is going to continue to rise. Yes its binary but a $100 dollar bill is 12 cents of paper and ink LOL so argument ended on that front. 

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Permalink Reply by truth on March 31, 2013 at 7:01pm

Max Keiser: “It is inevitable that Bitcoin will become a multi-trillion dollar enterprise because every other currency in the world is tied to dying central banks that are encumbered with impossible-to-pay debts and bankrupt counter-party risks.”
http://maxkeiser.com/2013/03/31/max-keiser-it-is-inevitable-that-bi...

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Permalink Reply by truth on March 31, 2013 at 7:03pm

Bitcoin 12160 http://tinyurl.com/cdzcvyx

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Permalink Reply by DTOM on April 1, 2013 at 9:47am

Another form of digits on a screen from nothing 'currency' - I place more worth in physical metals (gold, silver, copper etc), ammo, food, seeds, tools, toiletries - generally anything you can buy now, that won't be available/ produced after a collapse/ EMP/ deliberate shutdown of the net/coms (folks really think telecoms will be running following a financial collapse?!!)

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Permalink Reply by TheLasersShadow on April 3, 2013 at 1:18am

When I posted this BTC was $95 per and now it's hovering between $120 and $127 per BTC... 

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

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Permalink Reply by TheLasersShadow on April 3, 2013 at 3:15am

Now $140 a BTC making bitcoin a 1.5 billion dollar currency! EXPECT GOVERNMENT TO PANIC! More threats and rules incoming! MARK MY WORDS Bitcoin websites are going to be attacked by the feds here very soon likely the gambling and betting sites first, like http://satoshidice.com/ http://bitbet.us/ Then it will be exchanges for not complying with money laundering and patriot act type laws. They are coming no doubt about it, I have no proof but knowledge of the bad guys past actions. They can't allow this unregulated uncontrollable anonymous currency to storm forward like this.

I would advise you strongly not to hold your BTC in an exchange but to have it encrypted with truecrypt on a thumb drive as well as a copy again encrypted with a long solid gibberish password on a cloud server like dropbox or Mega. You should not have an unencrypted wallet laying around on your PC.

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Permalink Reply by truth on April 3, 2013 at 11:59am

Bitcoins Go Parabolic

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Permalink Reply by truth on May 14, 2013 at 10:57pm

DHS seizes funds at main Bitcoin exchange- issues court order again...

Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox's Dwolla account has come under the scrutiny of the US Department of Homeland Security, with users now unable to use the payment network to transfer bitcoins.

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