Monthly Archives: December 2016

Shinohai Round Up Ready Shitcoin Crop (Spoiler: The crop is poo corn)

Posted on by

This is a Shitcoin roundup. These blips are caused by corn surfacing in the slow-boilng liquid shit that constitutes their essence.

  • Eth huffers continue to struggle to keep their coin from plummeting below  $7.50 USD in "value" this week.
  • Roger Ver continues seeking mining support for Buttcoin Unlimited  and the toppling of theymos so that he might gain control of reddit's r/bitcoin. Ver also made a $25k gift to freeross.org to further boost his standing with the redditears and sjw's.
  •  Coindesk released a dismal "reader's choice" list of "influential people" in Bitcoin and "Blockchain". None of the persons listed were to be found in deedbot's WoT, the lone exception being The DAO hacker, who was voted #1.

Coinbase Targeted In Cryptsy Class Action

Posted on by

A nationwide class action lawsuit has been filed against Coinbase (D.CBSE) by Silver Law Group and Wites & Kapetan, P.A. of Florida, alleging the company violated laws by allowing Cryptsy exchange operator Paul Vernon to launder stolen funds through their service.

The lawsuit states that:

Coinbase failed to satisfy its regulatory requirements or perform any reasonable investigation into the suspicious activity in Mr. Vernon’s and Cryptsy’s Coinbase accounts. Although the exact amount remains undetermined, the lawsuit estimates that the value of the digital funds laundered through Coinbase exceeds $8,200,000.00. Mr. Vernon is believed to have absconded with those funds when he abandoned Cryptsy and fled to China in late-2015.

James D. Sallah is also named as a plaintiff in the suit. Sallah was named Receiver of the remaining Cryptsy funds seized by the courts after Mr. Vernon absconded to China, and is pursuing action against individuals believed to have assisted Big Vern in his scheme. If you or a loved one suffered Sorry For Your Loss you are encouraged to contact the attorneys listed above.

Ashley Madison Settles Again

Posted on by

Ashley Madison has agreed to pay a settlement of 1.6 Million US to the Federal Trade Commission, to settle an investigation into their business practices stemming from last year's hack. The breach was reportedly one of the largest ever investigated by the FTC, affecting 36 million users, leaving Avid Life Media as a shining example of what consumers have come to expect in the dating and social-media universe. Avid Life Media was the parent company of Ashley Madison, and re-branded itself as "Ruby" in April and appointed a new CEO to whitewash its image.

Ruby CEO Rob Segal said in a statement:

“Today’s settlement closes an important chapter on the company’s past and reinforces our commitment to operating with integrity and to building a new future for our members, our team and our company,”

The company came under scrutiny by the FTC when the hack revealed that the majority of the female users on the site were in fact chatbots designed to lure men into paying for a premium messaging service offered to members. The terms of the settlement require Ruby to no longer use chatbots or other such deceptive practices and also must set up a security plan for review.

Ubuntu Crash Reports Allow Remote Code Execution

Posted on by

A serious security flaw has been discovered in the Ubuntu operating system that allows remote code execution using the Apport crash report tool. Security researcher Donncha O'Caerbhaill, who discovered the flaw, found that by parsing a specially crafted crash file, he could execute arbitrary Python code.

The code first checks if the CrashDB field starts with { indicating the start of a Python dictionary. If found, Apport will call Python’s builtin eval() method with the value of the CrashDB field. eval() executes the passed data as a Python expression which leads to straight forward and reliable Python code execution.

This particular design flaw would allow an attacker to easily takeover a victim's box by convincing them to open a single text file that opens the crash reporter. O'Caerbhaill published a proof of concept to his Github page along with a video demonstrating the exploit, designated CVE-2016-9949, in action.

Bitcoin Network Difficulty Up ~8.16%, Yellen Announces Higher Interest Rate Target Hours Before Increase

Posted on by

The Bitcoin network mining difficulty increased from 286765766820.55041504 to 310153855703.43334961 for an approximately 8.1558 percent climb. In addition to itterating the first significant figure by one this increase is another all time high.

Meanwhile Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen announced that zhe and zher fellow Federal Reserve governors would be increasing the target range for the Federal Funds rate from 0.25-0.5 percent to 0.5-0.75 percent. This roughly doubles the cost of borrowing for the United States just in time for The Great Again.

Yahoo Leaks Again, Up To 1 Billion Affected!

Posted on by

Yahoo has announced yet another breach of their email systems, affecting over 1 billion users and possibly exposing data "including phone numbers, birth dates and security questions" which occurred in 2013 and is separate from the incident that was announced in September of this year. News of the latest hack sent Yahoo shares down nearly 3% in after-hours trading and could have implications for their sale to Verizon communications, which has not yet been finalized. Officials believe someone was able to access the code the servers operate on and used the information to forge session cookies.

The announcement in its entirety from Yahoo stated:

"Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has identified data security issues concerning certain Yahoo user accounts. Yahoo has taken steps to secure user accounts and is working closely with law enforcement.

"As Yahoo previously disclosed in November, law enforcement provided the company with data files that a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. The company analyzed this data with the assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data. Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, Yahoo believes an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts. The company has not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft. Yahoo believes this incident is likely distinct from the incident the company disclosed on September 22, 2016.

"For potentially affected accounts, the stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system the company believes was affected.

"Yahoo is notifying potentially affected users and has taken steps to secure their accounts, including requiring users to change their passwords. Yahoo has also invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to access an account.

"Separately, Yahoo previously disclosed that its outside forensic experts were investigating the creation of forged cookies that could allow an intruder to access users' accounts without a password. Based on the ongoing investigation, the company believes an unauthorized third party accessed the company's proprietary code to learn how to forge cookies. The outside forensic experts have identified user accounts for which they believe forged cookies were taken or used. Yahoo is notifying the affected account holders, and has invalidated the forged cookies. The company has connected some of this activity to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the data theft the company disclosed on September 22, 2016.

"Yahoo encourages users to review all of their online accounts for suspicious activity and to change their passwords and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which they use the same or similar information used for their Yahoo account. The company further recommends that users avoid clicking links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails and that they be cautious of unsolicited communications that ask for personal information. Additionally, Yahoo recommends using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password on Yahooaltogether.

Additional information is available on the Yahoo Account Security Issues FAQs page: https://yahoo.com/security-update.

Alphabet's Google Presents Youtube Bans A Government Media Outlet

Posted on by

Alphabet's Google presents Youtube has banned the Democratic People's Republic of Best Korea's state sponsored media organization from utilizing their service. A stooge from Google Asia offered:

"We don’t comment on individual videos or channels, but we do disable accounts that violate our terms of service or community guidelines, and when we are required by law to do so."

Youtube still hosts multiple channels for the US propaganda outlet Voice of America including VOA 1 and VOA Learning English.

Fake News Today: WaPo Works To Undermine Trump Election With Unsourced Assertions

Posted on by

Over the weekend the Washington Post along with Democratic party operatives Woodward and Bernstein worked to undermine the election of Donald Trump by asserting an "Intelligence source" with no name or agency affiliation provided saw proof of Russian interference with the election. This has been conflated by the Washington Post to mean the CIA decisively concluded that there indeed was Russian interference in the election.

The WaPo's mystery source further insists the Republican National Committee was hacked to in spite of a lack of any wikileaks or announced evidence of a hack.1

This is an early bullish indicator for a second Trump term in the presidency as the losing socialist party is set to expend its efforts trying to delegitimize the populist candidate instead of courting the working class whites they demonized and abandoned.

  1. While it is likely that both the US Democratic Socialist Party and US Republican Socialist Party are constantly being hacked by state level actors only one party's candidate and leadership had a notorious reputation before the election for disregarding any and all information hygiene recommendations. There is a limit on the secrets Arkencide can keep when you just keep information around wherever.  ↩

Ruskies Chase ISIS Out Of Palmyra, ISIS Returns Hours Later

Posted on by

ISIS retook the ancient city of Palmyra just hours after Russian airstrikes designed to drive them away from the city failed. (archived); ISIS occupied the 2000 year old site for 10 months until early this year, and destroyed many ancient temples and performed executions at the ruin sites. Palmyra is considered a strategic city because it lies along a route serving oil wells.

Lower Korea Makes "Our Democracy" Weird Again

Posted on by

Lower Korean1 President Park Geun-hye was impeached following a scandal involving confidential information granted to the president's "Spiritual Advisor" by the chief executive of our democracy. On top of the simple charge the President was impeached for there was substantial media campaign involving the occult and tawdry sex allegations which eroded popular support for the President as is traditional in our democracy. Park Geun-hye remains the President of lower Korea including residence at the Blue House though Presidential powers of our democracy have been transferred to the Prime Minister until the Supreme Court rules on the impeachment.

If the Supreme Court rules to eject Park Geun-hye from office, the United Nation's Ban Ki Moon is the leading candidate to win the office. Conveniently Moon's term as UN Secretary General expires at the end of this year. Make Our Democracy Weird Again!

  1. Also known as Republic of Korea, not to be confused with The Democratic People's Republic of Best Korea  ↩