Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Niên reports (archive) that several computers located at Vietnam's Ministry of Justice recently became infected with ransomware leading to the encryption of important data. Following the ransomware attack, other agencies under the helm of the MoJ were advised to guard against such infections in a stock standard manner as is typically suggested by government – don't visit unfamiliar websites and take extra caution opening email attachments. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: May 2015
Six Months In, OKCoin Relinquish Control Of Bitcoin.com
Despite a rumoured five year contract between blockchain.info and the owner of bitcoin.com which would see blockchain.info manage the desirable domain name, management of the site was switched to OKCoin in December of last year. At that time OKCoin hoped to build a site which would raise more awareness (archive) about Bitcoin. Six months later, OKCoin has announced it will no longer be managing bitcoin.com due to contractual conflicts with Roger Ver. OKCoin allege Ver responded to the decision to part ways with threats of publicly announcing OKCoin engage in fraud and potential lawsuits. Continue reading
Bitfinex Hot Wallet Possibly Compromised
Bitfinex has announced (archive) that their hot wallet may have been compromised and in a move reminiscent of the Bitstamp hack earlier this year is asking customers to cease deposits to older addresses at this time. The full statement reads: Continue reading
Social Engineering Attack Takes Bitcoin Talk Offline
Theymos of Bitcoin Talk has advised that a successful social engineering attack on the ISP NFOrce enabled an attacker to gain access to the server which hosts the once popular forum. Theymos writes (archive): Continue reading
Lawsky Moves to Private Practice
New York Department of Financial Services superintendent Ben Lawsky is stepping down to pursure a career in private practice. Some time in the near future the New York Department of Financial Services is anticipated to pass some variant of the previously revised "BitLicense" regulation removing their jurisdiction from any relevance with concern to Bitcoin's future.
St Louis Federal Reserve Bank DNS Hijacked Last Month
This week the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis confirmed earlier rumours that they had been victims of a domain name server hijacking attack which compromised a number of user credentials related to their research services and products. The Bank has responded by resetting user passwords and emailing subscribers to alert them to the fact their credentials are likely in the hands of the hijackers.
Weak 4096 Bit RSA Key in Strong Set Factored, More Factored Keys Follow
Update: No Such lAbs reports that other Phuctored keys have valid signatures.
Update 2: More factored RSA Keys and their purported owners have been disclosed
This morning the Phuctor operated by No Such lAbs broke its first RSA key. The compromised key in question which was a 4096 bit key which had a subkey divisible by 231, which is further divisible by 3, 7, and 11. This factorization was shortly followed by two other factorizations of identifiable keys. Each identifiable key has a companion which is similarly weak but they have yet to be identified. Continue reading
Mining Difficulty Jumps By 2.44%
With the tenth adjustment in the Bitcoin mining difficulty for 2015, the difficulty has increased to 48,807,487,245. Today's adjustment represents an increase of 2.44% over May 3rd's difficulty of 47,643,398,018. The global hash rate as of today's change stands at 349,377,603 GH/s.
Russian Block On Bitcoin Websites Overturned
A move to block access to Bitcoin related websites from within Russia earlier this year has been overturned according to a Russian bitcoin news site (archive) after representatives from Bits.media as well as Bitcoinconf.ru successfully argued that the decision to ban their websites should be cancelled. Continue reading
Market News Roundup
This week there have been a few major developments in the Bitcoin market ecosystem. Continue reading