Pankaj 'escrow.ms' Bhardwaj was arrested by police for participating in a fraud ring that used cloned debit cards to withdraw money from other people's accounts at automated teller machines (archived). Under his forum username escrow.ms, Bhardwaj was a member of the "Default Trust" list used to seed the reputation ratings system on Theymos's Bitcointalk forum. He enjoyed a stellar reputation on that forum as evidenced by a thread on that forum discussing recent developments in the life and times of escrow.ms forum escrow, default trust member, and apparent fiat payment card cloner. Escrow.ms is not the first member of Bitcointalk's default trust list to undergo a sudden transition from trustiness to ignominy. Shortly after the creation of the default trust list, inaugural member member TradeFortress operated node.js based webwallet service Inputs.io for only a few short months before 4,100 Bitcoins disappeared from the service on November 7th, 2013.
Category Archives: India
Mass Ransomware Strike Hits Millions Of Indian Computers
A massive malware strike affecting three Indian banks and a pharmaceutical company has at a ransom of 1 Bitcoin per machine incurred a total ransom equivalent to multiple millions of United States dollars at fiat/Bitcoin interface reported exchange rates (archived). Apparently only select machines operated by executives had their ransoms paid, but as the source article notes even with the files decrypted malware may remain allowing for easier insertion for future penetrators. Paying ransomware demands is the recovery method officially endorsed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The particular piece of ransomware used in this strike goes by the name LeChiffre (archived). It does not propagate automatically and its windows executable needs to be initiated manually. These means that to be deployed on this scale the entire network infrastructure of these enterprises was thoroughly penetrated and brought to submit to the ransomers.
India Imposes and US Considers Tariffs on Hot Rolled Steel
Last week India imposed a 20% tariff on a number of hot rolled steel products to "safeguard" domestic production. According to the Business Standard this has lead domestic producers to drop their customarily negotiated discounts and begin charging customers according to their actual published price sheets (archived). Earlier this month the United States began an investigation (archived) into hot rolled steel products of their own and have just announced that based on early findings they intend to continue the investigation (archived) as imports appear to impose "harm" on US producers in their determination through low prices. The US can be expected to follow India in introducing protectionist tariffs on hot rolled steel soon. As a larger tend expect bureaucracy heavy states struggling to support domestic industry such as the United States and India to begin ramping up their imposition of protectionist tariffs in an effort to keep the remains of their domestic production capacity from being gutted.
Governor For Reserve Bank Of India Talks Bitcoin: Is Worrisome, Security Issues
Raghuram Rajan, who is the Governor for the Reserve Bank of India, spoke with Indian students in an hour long discussion put together by NDTV and hosted by Dr Prannoy Roy. Fielding questions from the audience, one student asked Rajan for his opinion on Bitcoin to which Rajan stated the security is an issue and that some features of Bitcoin are worrisome. Continue reading