From the rise and demise of Silk Road to the current state of the crypto-currency frenzy, the story of bitcoin involves mysterious characters, million-dollar robberies and stealthy malware that will make you think twice before going online with your money. In his VB paper, Santiago Pontiroli looks at the most interesting malware samples that target the popular bitcoin currency and some of the major events that surrounded it during this past year.
He also investigates the flaws that allowed several bad guys to steal more money than one could ever imagine, and how they did it without ever firing a gun or stepping into a bank. Finally, he rounds off with some of the benefits that digital currencies offer to Latin American countries and the state of crypto-currency-stealing malware in the region and worldwide. It all started aroundwhen a mysterious character using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto released his research about a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, now popularly known as bitcoin.
It promised several advantages over current cash systems, but little did we know the kind of changes it would bring to our everyday lives and the global economy as a whole. Like any currency, bitcoin can be used to purchase or sell goods, as a unit for value measurement or as value storage, which can be saved and spent at a future point in time. Due to the fact that the bitcoin currency is not controlled by crypto weeklyare we in full market recovery bitcoin in 28 year old gameus exchange enquiry central authority, but by its contributors, it has made some governments rather nervous, resulting in crypto weeklyare we in full market recovery bitcoin in 28 year old gameus exchange enquiry heated debate about whether it should be regulated.
However, regulation is not entirely feasible, given the crypto weeklyare we in full market recovery bitcoin in 28 year old gameus exchange enquiry design of the bitcoin currency and network. AfterSatoshi disappeared from the project he created without leaving a trace or so he thoughtresulting in many urban legends about his revolutionary invention and secretive identity. What we know for sure is that after many years, bitcoin is as strong as ever.
Digital currencies have many potential advantages when we compare them to their real-life counterparts. If we add the benefits of decentralization, privacy not equal to anonymity and ubiquity, we can begin to understand the temptation to invest time and money in bitcoins.
In some regions, especially Latin America, where the local currency suffers progressive and continuous devaluation, and the yearly inflation makes alternative currencies a viable and attractive option for saving your hard-earned salary, bitcoin is gaining momentum.
In the same way, the tech-savvy middle and upper classes are beginning to see bitcoin as a legal alternative to stashing American dollars. The percentage of users attacked by different types of malware each month [ 1 ]. While some early adopters have been involved in the bitcoin market from the beginning by means of mining or simply by participating in exchangesothers are just grasping the concept of cryptocurrencies and learning about the perils of bitcoin by force — be it in the form of ransomware demanding a quick payment or malicious mining code consuming their limited computing resources.
From wallet-stealing malware to large scale bitcoin exchange heists, we can find just about anything in the crypto world, and this is just the beginning. Nowadays, we talk about malware and cybercrime as two sides of the same bit coin, usually referring to organized gangs of criminals with a clear differentiation of roles engaged in illegal activities with the sole purpose of financial profit.
It makes sense, then, to observe a correlation in the number of malware samples targeting bitcoin users in the wild and the price of the currency being exchanged in markets worldwide.
Made infamous by one of the many incidents suffered by the Mt. Gox exchange, transaction malleability is amongst the most common flaws discussed regarding the bitcoin protocol. The problem occurs due to the fact that the transaction ID TXID can be changed by a malicious node before the transaction is confirmed on the network. By analysing the incidents reported within the timeline in which they were made public, it seems that for thebitcoins to disappear, a substantial number of transaction malleability attacks would have to have taken place in the network.
Although not entirely illegal, a curious piece of code was found within the bitcoin blockchain recently. This might be just an amusing anecdote now, but since the entire blockchain is downloaded for each client in order to be part of the network, we can wonder about the inclusion of illegal crypto weeklyare we in full market recovery bitcoin in 28 year old gameus exchange enquiry there.
Holding such material would be cause for prosecution in some countries, which is why a limitation on data storage in outbound transactions has been proposed [ 3 ]. Any content inserted in the blockchain will persist for the lifetime of the bitcoin network.
Even though theoretically possible, the prohibitive cost of performing such an attack leaves well funded agencies or governments that have massive computational power at their disposal as the only possible parties with the capability of engaging in this kind of network takeover. Since bitcoin is considered a decentralized currency, there would be no single authority in charge of monitoring or stopping such an attack if it were to happen.
Fortunately, it would be more profitable for an attacker simply to follow the rules of the network in order to maximize profits, instead of targeting their hashing power for crypto weeklyare we in full market recovery bitcoin in 28 year old gameus exchange enquiry purposes. Conspiracy theories have been discussed, and the idea of someone pursuing this activity in order to create financial mayhem, causing bitcoin holders to lose confidence in the currency with a following rapid decline of the unit value is possible, but still highly unlikely to happen.
An attacker would be capable, for example, of reversing transactions sent by him or preventing other transactions from getting the confirmations needed to be added in the blockchain. A different scenario is presented when discussing mining pools.
In the case of bitcoin, several months ago, the Ghash. A great number of miners noticed this issue and changed pools immediately in order to avoid giving Ghash. It is now considered good practice for mining pools to increase their fee when reaching the critical hashrate level so as to spread the miners and their computing power as evenly as possible.
Distributed bitcoin network hashrate as of 30 Maysampling the last 30 days [ 5 ]. Currently displaying a combined computing hashrate of Other cryptocurrencies have suffered the same ethical dilemma. Coinotron is a multi-coin mining pool [ 6 ]. Distributed litecoin network hashrate as of 30 May One interesting aspect of the hashrate reported by most mining pools is that the Pareto principle still applies to the digital economy.
This has more implications than may appear obvious — not only economical, but technological too. One cannot reach this level of processing power without resorting to ASICs and custom-built mining farms.
Cryptocurrencies are no doubt theoretically decentralized, but the crypto weeklyare we in full market recovery bitcoin in 28 year old gameus exchange enquiry is still in the hands of a few miners. Comparison between the mining difficulty rates amongst the most popular cryptocurrencies. It is not only bitcoin exchanges that can be the target of massive distributed denial of service attacks [ 8 ], but also the network itself. While not affecting the funds of bitcoin users, these attacks prevent transactions from being confirmed, creating confusion in the network and aiding transaction malleability attacks.
Even though bitcoin has some built-in protection against denial-of-service attacks, it has been found to be vulnerable to such types of attack and will probably continue to be in the future.
Analysing the CVE database, we can see that most of the vulnerabilities are denial of-service-related. In spite of this, even the Heartbleed vulnerability [ 9 ] took the bitcoin world by surprise. Even though a fix was quickly released in version 0.
CVE details datasource query for bitcoin software and protocol-related vulnerabilities, displaying a predominance of DoS vulnerability type [ 10 ]. Click here to view a larger version of Figure 6. As in the rest of the malware world, most of the bitcoin-related malware samples found target the Windows operating system, with very few of them targeting Mac OSX or Linux.
In the mobile world, Android has the virtual monopoly on bitcoin related infections, be they wallet stealers crypto weeklyare we in full market recovery bitcoin in 28 year old gameus exchange enquiry even mining applications.
As we have seen, there are many intrinsic flaws with the bitcoin protocol, although PEBKAC problem exists between keyboard and chair still holds true and users are the most common target for cybercriminals. For quite some time, not a single week has gone by without one of the major bitcoin exchanges reaching mainstream news.
We can attribute the success of some attacks to faulty technical implementations of the bitcoin wallet, others to clever social engineering approaches, and the rest to bad business practices and simple failure to adhere to proven security standards. There are too many incidents to list them all, but a handful of the most prominent ones are detailed in the paragraphs that follow. They all make great learning tools for the new generation of bitcoin exchanges.
Without ever firing a single gunshot, attackers demonstrated that we had already entered a new era of bank robberies. The loot of aroundUSD was enough to demonstrate the importance of the crypto market and highlight the lack of security measures taken by most of the exchange houses in the business. Stopping all transactions and shutting down the service was the first step to be taken after the rest of the common procedures for handling these situations.
In the same weekend, Poloniex announced a minor but crucial software bug that would ultimately decide the fate of this digital currency exchange business. As a result of not being able to cover the losses, the owner decided to deduct As with other services, shutting down the website and halting transactions was the first measure taken — before even announcing that anything had gone wrong, leaving many users wondering what had happened to their money.
Not long afterwards, Bitcurex announced through its website that it would resume operations on 18 March, and that, due to good monitoring practices, only part of the funds present in its system had been stolen, preventing a larger attack from happening.
Picostockswhich according to its official description facilitates valuation and fundraising for high-tech startup projects and companies and offers services for both bitcoin investors and entrepreneurs, lost 5, bitcoins on 29 November A quarter-million-dollar heist is not something to frown upon, given the circumstances in which the following robbery took place.
As with other exchanges, Bitfloor ceased all trading operations and promised to repay its customers. This demonstrated the instability and vulnerability of the bitcoin exchange industry as much as any of the other infamous cases.
At a market value of Bitfloor was the fourth bitcoin-based exchange, closely behind Mt. GoxBTC-E and Bitstampbut it was no stranger to similar incidents, having lost 25, user coins in During its period of activity in —, Bitcoin Savings and Trust showed the world that Ponzi schemes could also exist in a digital currency scenario. With 3, bitcoins stolen, this financial fraud, courtesy of Trendon T. Shavers, came as little shock to anyone.
On 1 OctoberCanadian Bitcoins entered the hall of fame for the silliest heist made on a bitcoin exchange. With nothing more than a chat session and smooth talk, a crafty cybercriminal convinced an attendee at Rogers Data Centre to reboot the Canadian Bitcoins server in fail safe mode, bypassing all security measures.
James Grant, the owner of Canadian Bitcoinswas puzzled to say the least, but still managed to cover the losses from his own pocket. Bitcoinica witnessed two attacks during — one in July and one in May — setting a precedent in the local courts as the second case involving bitcoin to be filed in the legal system.
Four users registered a complaint, asking to be compensated withUSD for the funds lost and grievance suffered. Even though at the time, the 18, bitcoins stolen were worth 90, USD, it made sense for the users to ask for a substantially higher compensation, given the ever-changing value of bitcoin. Talk about bad timing: List of bitcoin heists with the most media coverage [ 11 ] shown in a logarithmic scale.
Values taken from approximate historical BTC prices [ 12 ]. Click here to view a larger version of Figure 7. Gox exchange deserves a section of its own. Gox decided to close its doors, amidst allegations of a transaction malleability attack that had taken place — and gone unnoticed — over a long period of time. Introduced in Octoberthe limited geometric release of new coins and the controlled difficulty rate set at every 2, new blocks produced, makes litecoin the second largest cryptocurrency measured by market capitalization.
In addition, as an intended improvement on the most noticeable bitcoin flaws, litecoin uses a scrypt proof-of-work algorithm in contrast to the SHA used by bitcoin, with the hopes of slowing down the creation of FPGA and ASIC mining farms.
Processing each block takes 2. Based on a popular Internet meme, dogecoin DOGE has also become a big player in the cryptocurrency market. The greatly supportive community, fond of giving away DOGE tips and starting fundraisers for a variety of causes, has received enough media attention to make it interesting for cybercriminals. Being a controlled inflationary currency, there are expected to be billion DOGE in circulation by the end ofwith 5.
With the initial intention of reaching a broader audience, and with transaction confirmations taking as little as one minute, it has established itself as a showcase of how simple it is to start a new cryptocurrency trend. ATMs are already being manufactured, and the unorthodox and grammatically incorrect cryptocurrency has already sponsored a NASCAR driver, the Jamaican Bobsled Olympic team in Sochi, and several other charity-related activities.
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