Hacking group OurMine has struck again, this time targeting the twitter account of Pokemon Go creator John Hanke. Hanke was apparently too busy catching them all to have done any password hygenics. This neglect allowed the hackers to easily breach his Quora account, which led to the twitter account being compromised. The account still displayed tweets by the hackers at the time of this article (archived). Mr. Hanke is merely the latest in a series of attacks targeting high-profile users on social media, this is likely fallout from the trove of passwords leaked by the hacker Peace. Him in our time.
Author Archives: shinohai
Bleeding Coinbase Raises Fees
Coinbase continues to exhibit signs of bleeding funds, having announced on their website that fees will increase to 3.99% for credit and debit card purchases in most countries where their service is offered beginning August 5th. (archived) It is not known if the decision to change their fee structure is due to losing money from their recent etherape. Sorry fork, your loss.
Brian Armstrong Still Has Hard On For Harkforks
Hoping to climb to the top of the "fork all the things" subculture, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (WOT:nonperson) is now intent on a push to hardfork reddit's r/bitcoin, calling on reddit CEO Steve Huffman to remove /u/theymos as moderator and turn control of the subreddit over to persons more aligned with Coinbase's business interests. Huffman attempted a neutral take stating: “We’ve seen that with the Bitcoin community, I don't disagree with you at all. Right now, our opinion is that we try to stay hands-off unless they’re breaking other, site-wide rules." Speculation still abounds that Roger Ver is helping to finance the lulz, going so far as to offer a bounty in order to have theymos removed. Ver is widely known for quoting himself and paying mercenaries to spam links to his forum across various social media sites. Armstrong publicly weeks prior that he was unsubscribing from r/Bitcoin and instead getting his news from r/btc instead, though as other reddit users point out, listening to redditards can have real-life disatrous consequences. Reddit has a history of censorship aimed at promoting other Y-Combinator associated ventures. Peace in our time.
Ether Huffing Gossip Continues, Exchanges Risk Insolvency
Ethereum vs. Ethereum Classic continues to be top on the gossip list on this week's shitcoin roundup. Beleaguered fiat-to-cryptocoin exchanges Coinbase/GDAX and btc-e have both declared the "Classic" fork a scam,1 and have declared they will not release user funds on that particular side of the fork. Classic continued to have more volume overall in the past 24 hours, moving $ 38,714,800 compared to Ethereum's $ 19,722,200. Ethereum project collaborators such as MIT and now Cornell are frantically hoping to use their new magic mutable blockchain powers to convince users that this is really how crypto works, with Cornell sponsoring a "Ethereum Blockchain Bootcamp" with Pope Vitalik Butterin himself in attendance. (archived).
The actual scam is that in spite of being enlightened as to how hard forks work, the leaked numerous tokens on the chain that was initially in the minority and now they have a hole in their books that can only be filled by playing fiat with declarations the coins never existed when in fact they lost them. ↩
Ethereum-iverse Bleeding Money
Corn futures fell precipitously early Monday morning as harvest expectations continue to improve. Meanwhile ether huffers saw a brief spurt of activity and the "Ethereum Classic" fork's price started dipping sharply across exchanges. Late Sunday evening, a huffer announced on reddit that he was filing a complaint with the SEC, but showed no sign of having ever read Mircea Popescu's excellent guide on interacting with such institutions. Other developing lulz revolve around a list of VC's flushing their money down the toilet on blockchain "tech", and reports of Ethereum "Whales" supporting the Dao Liberator financially. Sorry fork, your loss.
Major Huffing Exchange To Trade Tokens From Surviving, Time Traveling Theft Free, Side Of Split
Scamcoin exchange Poloniex announced on twitter that they have added market support for the "Ethereum Classic"1 (archived). Price in trading at the time of this article was 0.0012 BTC per Classic huff. Rumors were floating around the internet Sunday morning that a Chinese mining cartel intends to 51% the Ethereum Classic fork, to solidify the tradition of time travel theft among ether huffers. Sorry fork, your loss.
The side of the Chainsplit which remained after Buterin's fork to break the DOA contract and steal ether huffing tokens. ↩
Seafile Cloud Storage Forks
The summer of forks is claiming victims outside of the "blockchain ecosystem", with the Seafile cloud service announcing it will be forking its code due to what it feels are unfair price increases by the Chinese cartel Seafile Ltd. (archived) Seafile developers claim Seafile Ltd. revoked their access to the project's source code, and they were forced to respond by blocking the cartel's access to the community and support forums. No word was offered as to whether the split would affect the security of users data stored across the fork. Sorry fork, your loss.
Alleged Hero Arrested
Authorities have announced the arrest of Artem Vaulin, allegedly the man behind the KickassTorrents p2p bittorrent site. Ukranian prosecutors have charged Mr. Vaulin with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. kat.cr does not host any copyright infriging matter, but contains links to peers that can share the file. The DOJ is seeking to deport him to the US to stand trial for violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to an affidavit filed by Homeland Security agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan. Mr Der-Yeghiayan is famously known as a witness in the Ross Ulbricht trial, specifically the one who was convinced Mark Karpelès did it.
The Department of Justice press release can be found here. Peace in our time.
Poor Wi-Fi Hygeine Snags Data At RNC
Avast security announced today that rogue wireless access points set up in and around areas at the Republican national convention in Ohio netted around 1200 unsuspecting users in what the company claims was an experiment to demonstrate how risky it can be to connect to public Wi-Fi. Researchers set up several fake access points, naming them after common hotspots, and some with clever names like “I vote Trump! free Internet”. Approximately 1.6 Gb's of data was exposed, with the report stating that 68.3% of users had their identities or other sensitive information exposed upon connection. Nearly 25% of the users browsed porn sites, while only a little over 5% used the connections to play Pokemon Go. The experiment at the very least highlighted the lack of security consciousness amongst the average person that occurs on a daily basis.
Coinbase's Brian Armstrong Huffs The Ethereum Hardfork Jenkem
With approximately 24 hours left until Ethereum forks, at block 1,920,000, reports show that at least 60% of miners are supporting a hard fork at this time. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (WOT:nonperson) lauded the effort on twitter, stating that "If ethereum pulls off this hard fork, very positive signal for them as a team. Shows they can listen to community, execute in time of crisis." Ironically, it appears Mr. Armstrong will be correct in his assessment, as the hard fork will permanently execute any hopes that one can take the immutability of the Ether block chain seriously, and proving that "smart contracts" are not unstoppable and irreversible despite the hype to the contrary. Sorry for your loss.