CryptoLabs, a startup founded by Melanie Shapiro, today announced via TechCrunch the launch of their bitcoin hardware wallet named Case. In the introductory video, Shapiro describes Case as the easiest and most secure wallet, telling TechCrunch: Continue reading
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Lamassu: 100th Bitcoin ATM Operational
The Bitcoin ATM vendor Lamassu has announced the successful launch of its 100th Bitcoin ATM thanks to installations in Finland and Indonesia.
Lamassu first began taking pre-orders for the machines in August of 2013 and in April of this year, Lamassu CEO Zach Harvey told the Coin Summit conference held in San Francisco that more than 220 orders had been placed for the machines. This month's announcement that the 100th machine is now operational represents less than 50% of pre-orders having made it to market despite more than a year passing since pre-orders first began. Pre-order sales are often used to conflate the success of a product. Continue reading
CoinVault: Decrypt One File For Free, Send Bitcoin To Decrypt The Rest
From Webroot comes a report of a new piece of ransomware called CoinVault. CoinVault works much in the same way as previous iterations of ransomware such as CryptoLocker by encrypting the user's files and then demanding that the user pay a ransom with bitcoin if they wish to reclaim the files. Where CoinVault differs to other ransomware is that it offers the user the choice to decrypt one file for free. The CoinVault ransom states: Continue reading
USMS Auctioning More Bitcoins
Today the United States Marshals Service has opened an auction for 50,000 more Bitcoins seized from Ross Ulbricht. The bidder registration period began today at 9:00 AM Eastern Standard time and continues through noon on Monday December 1st, 2014. Bids in the auction are to be entered by registered bidders on December 4th, 2014 from 8:00 AM through 2:00 PM, Eastern Standard time. Friday December 5th the winning bidders will be notified by the United States Marshals Service. Notified winners must initiate a wire transfer from a bank located in the United States and present a receipt for the wire transfer to the Marshals Service by 2:00 PM Eastern Standard time on Monday December 8th, 2014. Further details on the Auction structure: Continue reading
Rick Snyder Announces Michigan Cyber Civilian Corps
Following in the wake of the Detroit Mayor's announcement that they were too poor to pay a ransom, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has announced that the state plans to deploy "volunteer information security experts" in order to combat attacks on Michigan's information technology infrastructure. This announcement came at the same North American International Cyber Summit. Continue reading
Detroit Hit By Ransomware in April
According to The Detroit News and the Associated Press a city database was hit by ransomware this past April. According to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan a ransom of 2,000 BTC was requested in order to restore access to the affected database. He also reported the ransom was not paid as the database was apparently not that important. This was revealed at the North American International Cyber Summit at Cobo Center. At the summit the Mayor also presented something else as problematic. Continue reading
This Onion, It Smells: Inherent Hazards of the Tor Network
This week Pando Daily's Yasha Levine wrote a follow up to a post from this summer where Yasha documented many of the numerous and transparent connections between the Tor developers and the United States Government. Nothing Yasha wrote in the original piece is particularly controversial, nearly all of it comes from public records, but still Yasha was able to write a follow up on all of the venom Yasha received from fans of Tor without any actual refutations of her points. The simple fact of the matter is that Tor was born of the needs of the United States Government's intelligence community, and continued funding to keep the main Tor developers fed, clothed, and sheltered largely comes from the coffers of those interests. Continue reading
Coinbase Seeking A Risk Investigator
Qntra previously reported on the use of Voxis Platform, a payment platform used by carders to convert stolen credit cards into cash and/or bitcoin via payment processors such as PayPal, Stripe and Coinbase. At the time of publication, Qntra contacted Coinbase regarding the allegations and asked if they could confirm that the Voxis Platform was being used by carders to target Coinbase. Qntra was told we would receive a reply after it was forwarded to legal to which no response has been received. Continue reading
Coinbase Rumoured To Raise $50 Million Bezzlars, Down From $150 Million Bezzlars
Coinbase, the company that is well known for locking in the purchase price of your bitcoin.. unless the price happens to go up in the interim in which case the purchase is flagged as a high risk transaction and cancelled, is rumoured to be raising between USD $40-60 million. The round of new investment is rumoured to be lead by Draper Fisher Jurvetson according to an article published by Re/code. Continue reading
Onename Raises $1.5 Million in Seed Funding for Decentralized Authentication
It was confirmed this week Onename has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. On Wednesday, the company announced on their blog they would be open-sourcing a set of tools including a suite to utilize their in-development Openname Auth, a protocol for decentralized and password-less authentication. These set of tools work with their already open source protocol upon which Onename is built on called Openname, which in turn is built upon Namecoin. Continue reading