Criminals running the Cryptolocker scam have become the latest victim of the Bitcoin bubble.
New versions of the malware have been shown by anti-virus firm F-Secure as having a lower ransom demand than previously.
Bitcoin is money – people can use it to buy anything from pizza to plastic surgery. The meteoric rise of the online currency has caused everyone from financial regulators to law enforcement to the US Senate to stand up and take notice. But a growing group of computer scientists think this is just the beginning.
Here’s your digital-currency lesson of the day, courtesy of a guy who calls himself TradeFortress: “I don’t recommend storing any bitcoins accessible on computers connected to the internet.”
Mark Karpeles is the man who built the world’s largest bitcoin exchange. But now that the digital currency is reaching the mainstream, his success may slip through his fingers.
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom asserts that the protocol is incentive-compatible and secure against colluding minority groups, i.e., it incentivizes miners to follow the protocol as prescribed.
Whatever your opinion of Bitcoin, it does stand as a high-quality intellectual achievement. Now, a group of researchers from Johns Hopkins are suggesting its cryptographic implementation could help solve the “certificate problem” for ordinary users.
Apart from whether or not they might be universally compromised by the spooks, a problem with Public Key Infrastructure – PKI – certificates is that they depend on users' trust of the certification authority (CA) that sits at the top of the trust hierarchy.
Four years ago, Oslo-man Christopher Koch's girlfriend scoffed at his purchase of $27-worth of Bitcoin. Chances are she was singing a decidedly different tune last April, when Koch checked back in on his investment and found out it was worth $886,000. And over a cool million today.
The idealism and convenience behind virtual currencies such as Bitcoin is at risk of being undermined as abuse by professional criminals grows to unacceptable levels, a report by security firm McAfee has argued.
The catalogue of practical and conceptual problems listen in the firm’s Digital Laundry overview is perhaps not particularly original – numerous critics have spotted potential flaws in virtual currency systems – but serves as a timely reminder of their growing importance to cybercriminals.
Researchers from Symantec have successfully sinkholed a significant proportion of the infamous Zero Access botnet, rescuing hundreds of thousands of the 1.9 million victims from the scam's zombie masters.
Symantec reported details of the operation after discovering a way to sinkhole an early version of the Zero Access botnet. The firm claimed that despite not working on an evolved version of the malicious program, the operation managed to detach over 500,000 machines from the zombie network.
A 107-year-old Australian pub has decided to accept the world's newest currency: Bitcoin.
Garry Pasfield, publican at The Old Fitzroy in Sydney's bohemian inner city suburb of Wooloomooloo told The Reg he likes the idea of getting in early on Bitcoin. Pasfield said he's no idea if Bitcoin will take off, but likes the idea of being among the first to accept it as payment.
