NAUKA I KVAZINAUKA (izvorište inspiracije za mnoga SF dela) > KOMPJUTERI, HARDVER, SOFTVER, INTERNET, TELEKOMUNIKACIJE...
Kriptovalute
Meho Krljic:
Jedan od viđenijih Bitcoin developera tvrdi da stvari odlaze u qras:
The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment
Meho Krljic:
A onda, ima i ovo:
Cryptsy Bitcoin Trader Robbed, Blames Backdoor in the Code of a Wallet
--- Quote --- Cryptsy, a website for trading Bitcoin, Litecoin, and other smaller crypto-currencies, announced a security incident, accusing the developer of Lucky7Coin of stealing 13,000 Bitcoin and 300,000 Litecoin, which at today's rate stands more than $5.7 million / €5.2 million.
According to a blog post penned by the Cryptsy team, the incident took place on July 29, 2014, at 13:17:36, when funds started being moved from the company's wallets to new locations.
After an internal investigation, the Cryptsy team concluded that the "the developer of Lucky7Coin had placed an IRC backdoor into the code of [a] wallet, which allowed it to act as a sort of a Trojan, or command and control unit."
Lucky7Coin developer contacted Cryptsy before the robbery Before this incident, on May 22, 2014, the Cryptsy team received an email from a man named Jack that informed the Bitcoin trader that he was taking over development of the Lucky7Coin (LK7) from its original creator.
Jack was begging the Bitcoin trader not to drop his newly-acquired crypto-currency and was informing the team of his good intentions, a new GitHub repository where the crypto-currency was being developed, along with a series of upgrades and changes he was planning.
"Some may ask why we didn’t report this to the authorities when this occurred, and the answer is that we just didn’t know what happened, didn’t want to cause panic, and were unsure who exactly we should be contacting," the Cryptsy team explained.
Irony has it that Cryptsy was in touch with Secret Service Agent Shaun Bridges on an unrelated matter just around the time of their own robbery. A few months later, Bridges was arrested and pleaded guilty to stealing a large sum of Bitcoin from the Silk Road investigation. He was later sentenced to 71 months in prison.
The FBI didn't want to investigate As time went by after their investigation and with no other clues on hand, Cryptsy then contacted the Miami FBI office, who redirected them to I3C (Interoperable Informatics Infrastructure Consortium), who in turn never responded to their contact attempts.
Cryptsy managed to limp along for another year and a half thanks to a customer liabilities reserve of 10,000 Bitcoin ($3.7 million / €3.4 million).
Nevertheless, site users started experiencing withdrawal delays. Things turned bad on October 4, 2015, when an article on CoinFire (now 99Bitcoins) said the site was under a federal investigation, which Cryptsy's CEO quickly denied.
Most users believed the accusations that Cryptsy was trying to pull a bank-run, and rushed to pull out funds. By that time, most of the Bitcoin reserve was gone, and because Cryptsy didn't have any Litecoin reserve, the site's operators realized their impending doom and tried to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.
Cryptsy puts out a reward for information about the robber With no help from authorities, Cryptsy is now appealing to the Bitcoin community for help. The site has put up a 1,000 Bitcoin reward for information about the perpetrator of this attack (tips at reward@cryptsy.com).
Additionally, the site is still pondering if to file for bankruptcy or to wait for someone to purchase their service and refund users.
A third scenario would be if the man behind the attack would "realize" it was all a mistake and return the stolen funds, the site promising no legal action against him.
While the stolen Bitcoin have never left the wallets to which they were assigned after being taken from Cryptsy's own wallet, the stolen Litecoin are almost surely gone for good. Two days after the attack was carried out, exactly 300,000 Litecoin were dumped on the BTC-e exchange, driving Litecoin price down from $9.5 to $2.
Until the situation is resolved, Cryptsy announced that trades and withdrawals are suspended indefinitely.
UPDATE: As SlashDot user Gravis Zero and Reddit user frankenmint pointed out, someone reported the IRC backdoor code on March 8, 2015.
--- End quote ---
Skoro kao da bi bilo udobnije da ove valute reguliše nekakav centralni autoritet sa političkim ovlašćenjima i resursima da to čini... nekakva, šta ja znam, nacionalna banka ili nešto slično. Šteta što to još nije izmišljeno.
Meho Krljic:
Approximate Hardware Design and Bigger Bitcoin Mining Profits
Meho Krljic:
Ko će prvi nego Japan...
Japan eyes treating bitcoins the same as real money
--- Quote --- TOKYO -- Japanese financial regulators have proposed handling virtual currencies as methods of payment equivalent to conventional currencies, a step that would strengthen consumer protection and spur growth in the virtual economy.
The Financial Services Agency's legislative revisions would recognize bitcoins and other virtual currencies as fulfilling the functions of currency, it was learned Tuesday. They are now recognized as objects but are not treated on a par with their more established counterparts. The changes will be submitted during the current ordinary Diet session, with the goal of passage before the term ends.
Under the FSA's proposed definition, virtual currencies must serve as a medium of exchange, meaning that they can be used to purchase goods and services. They must also be exchangeable for legal tender through purchases or trades with an unspecified partner. The FSA sees such a definition possibly helping to develop the financial technology sector.
Exchanges and other institutions dealing in virtual currencies would have to register with the FSA, subjecting them to tighter oversight. The 2014 collapse of MtGox, then the world's largest bitcoin exchange, exposed consumer protection and other issues after customers lost funds on deposit. At the time, the government treated bitcoins as objects under no regulator's purview. Creating a legal framework will allow virtual currencies to spread more safely.
Some 600 virtual currencies now exist around the world. Bitcoin had a market capitalization of more than 700 billion yen (currently $6.24 billion) last November. Hopes are high for the currencies as both investment targets and low-cost methods of payment. Monetary authorities worldwide are setting out to regulate the technology, starting with measures to prevent money laundering and other illicit activity.
(Nikkei)
--- End quote ---
Meho Krljic:
Bitcoin's nightmare scenario has come to pass
--- Quote ---
Over the last year and a half a number of prominent voices in the Bitcoin community have been warning that the system needed to make fundamental changes to its core software code to avoid being overwhelmed by the continued growth of Bitcoin transactions. There was strong disagreement within the community, however, about how to solve this problem, or if the problem would ever materialize.
This week the dire predictions came to pass, as the network reached its capacity, causing transactions around the world to be massively delayed, and in some cases to fail completely. The average time to confirm a transaction has ballooned from 10 minutes to 43 minutes. Users are left confused and shops that once accepted Bitcoin are dropping out.
Bitcoin transactions are confirmed every time miners create a new block on the networks chain. Each block takes about ten minutes to mine, and can hold 1MB of information. At current volumes, there are more than 1MB worth of transactions asking to be confirmed in that time. To solve this bottleneck, many in the Bitcoin community have called for increasing the block size to 2MB.
This sounds simple, but has proven to be a highly contentious issue. A schism has developed between the team in charge of the original codebase for Bitcoin, known as Core, and a rival faction pushing its own version of that open source code with a block size increase added in, known as Classic.
The two sides are competing for users and miners
Anyone can cast a vote for their preferred code by running a Bitcoin node powered by that software. But the miners provide the computing power that will decide the winning code, kind of like delegates in a US presidential election. Most of the largest Chinese miners, representing the majority of mining resources, have thus far sided with Core.
Over the last few days both sides have accused the other of using increasingly aggressive and dirty tactics. The Core team says the network is congested because Classic advocates are spamming the network with low fee transactions miners can't be bothered to accept. Classic says that users who attempt to run nodes or mine blocks with their software have been hit with DDoS attacks that cripple their computer networks.
Many in the US Bitcoin community had hoped that hitting this crisis point — a network maxed out, transactions faltering — would result in closure, with miners quickly moving to adopt whichever chain proved more valuable to their economic interests. But so far the debate is dragging on without one side claiming a clear victory, leaving tens of thousands of consumer transactions stranded in limbo.
--- End quote ---
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version