Category Archives: North America

Sony Pictures Suffers Targeted Cyber Attack

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The Los Angeles Times reports that a group calling itself #GOP or "Guardians of Peace" has compromised the ability of movie studio Sony Pictures to derive any utility from their information technology infrastructure. Allegedly the group behind the event has not made any concrete demands, but is threatening to leak internal information from the studio to the web if certain demands are not met. This event deviates from typical, far less selective, ransomware attacks which happen to affect single computers opportunistically and then demand a set monetary ransom to facilitate the recovery of files. Self Proclaimed "hack victim" Mark Karpeles have offered that the Sony hackers might be Chinese or Korean based on a text encoding error.

FTC Argues That BFL Should Not Resume Operations

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Attorneys representing the FTC have argued that Butterfly Labs should not be allowed to resume operations on the basis that doing so would jeopardise assets which should be preserved for possible consumer redress. As part of their argument, the FTC presented an expert witness who testified that the machines BFL shipped to customers were already obsolete. Continue reading →

Netherlands Repatriates Some Gold

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There are reports that the Netherlands has repatriated a substantial portion of its gold holdings from the Federal Bank of New York to their own physical custody. This move changes their allocation of gold held at home from 11% to 31%, and the portion held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 51% to 31% while the remainder of their holdings are split between the Bank of England and Canada. There is no news yet as to whether they've drilled the bars and found tungsten.

US Department of Justice: Kim Dotcom can't challenge asset forfeiture

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In its continuing case against Kim Dotcom, lawyers for the United States Department of Justice are proposing that Dotcom's objections to seizing his assets around the world be completely tossed aside under the doctrine of fugitive disenfranchisement. This is in spite of the fact that Kim Dotcom is not under any reasonable definition a "US Person" who reasonably could be a fugitive. A few points: Continue reading →

After Survery Vessenes' Foundation "Pivots"

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In a blog post the communications and marketing director of Vessenes' Bitcoin Foundation Jinyoung Lee Englund announced that they would be shifting their focus almost entirely towards the goal of funding "core development" in the wake of results from a member survey. In the past this Foundation has engaged in a mix of activities including lobbying, marketing, and "outreach" in addition to providing Gavin Andressen a salary to work on the Foundation's fork of Satoshi's Bitcoin codebase. After justifying the move in their post they offer the following: Continue reading →

Buterin Beats Zuckerberg for Award

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Vitalik Buterin beat Mark Zuckerberg for the 2014 World Technology Network award in IT software. The award is presented for Buterin's role as co-creator and inventor of Ethereum which has yet to exist and co-founding Bitcoin Magazine. The event was held at the Time & Life building which no longer houses Time Inc. Time was of course spun off Warner Communications earlier this summer to a chilly reception by investors.

Jim Robinson, Tim Draper Confirmed Bidders On Next USMS Bitcoin Auction

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Jim Robinson, a co-founder and managing partner at RRE Ventures stated in an interview with Bloomberg his intention to bid on the next USMS auction. Tim Draper also confirmed his intention to bid via an email sent to Bloomberg News earlier today. Both men are investors in the exchange "Mirror" which recently re-branded from the name Vaurum. Continue reading →