In late 2012 Coinbase was cultured by startup incubator, YCombinator on a plate of Thayer-Martin agar with the "mission" of "Becoming the Paypal of Bitcoin." The company seems to have had some success on the surveillance side of their mission by tracing user transactions and a slew of ex-customers who claim to have been banned with minimal explanation – a problem Coinbase seems to have despite their penitent userbase. Of special note here is Coinbase's security outsourcing that frequently results in vulnerabilities. Continue reading
Category Archives: Scams
US DO"J" Stops Sharing Bounty Of Theft With Locals
Today it was declared that the United States Department of "Justice" would cease to share value acquired through asset forfeiture and other forms of theft with local "law enforcement" agencies under the Equitable Sharing Program (archived). The program allowed local gangs incorporated as "law enforcement" agencies choose to partner with the DO"J" and receive federal assistance in seizing assets alleged to be connected with drug activity, even in spite of the demonstrable criminal innocence of parties from whom the assets were stolen. Through the Equitable Sharing Program local partners could receive up to 80% of the proceeds of their joint larceny. The Do"J" blames budget cuts for forcing its hand in suspending the program and insists the suspension will be temporary. It is unknown how many other perks presently enjoyed by local "law enforcement" gangs for cooperating with federal agencies will find themselves eroded in the near future.
Fake Star Wars Torrents Already Popping Up On Trackers
With the release of the new Star Wars film numerous fake torrents are being uploaded that claim to be the film. Many can be superficially spotted by checking file extensions and employing healthy caution about claims of quality. For such a new release legitimate torrents will likely emerge advertising CAM, HDCAM, and Telesync quality. BDRIP and HDRIP will be unlikely until the film nears home media release. Several fake Star Wars torrents spotted so far came from uploader accounts which appear to have been farmed with some effort having previous credible uploads in a social engineering effort to avoid the superficial appearance of spreading malware or harvesting IP addresses for litigation. Remember to exercise caution and let people with less impulse control handle the dirty work of identifying the actual film torrents when they appear.
Corpse of Vessenes' Fundnation Expels Janssens From Board
Oliver Janssens reported on Social media today that his fellow board members at the Vessenes' Fundnation expelled him from the board (archived). The circumstances leading to the expulsion followed a failed vote to disband the Vessenes' Fundnation in light of their breakneck march to insolvency. While this drama plagues the Vessenes' Foundation, the actual Bitcoin Foundation's work continues in providing stewardship over a reference Bitcoin codebase. Meanwhile other fiat backed groups incorporating words like "Digital Currency", "Council", "Blockchain", "R3", and "Chamber of Commerce" in their names have emerged trying to fill the void left by the late Vessenes' Fundnation in promoting scams and trying to subvert Bitcoin to fiat.
Gizmodo And Wired End Week Waffling On #Hoaxtoshi
Last week on Tuesday Gizmodo and Wired speculated to much derision a new candidate to correspond in meatspace to the ephemeral Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Both outlets ended the week by each publishing their own pieces resembling admissions of doubt about their initial reports in varying degrees. Wired came closer to doing the right thing by admitting (archived) they were in all likelihood attention scammed by Hoaxtoshi. Gizmodo on the other hand, lacking in humility and journalistic sobriety, in their piece work to salvage the narrative they presented with an appeal to mystery (archived). Continue reading
RBG Black Rebel Sentenced For Tweeting Link And Boosting Website Traffic
Alleged Rebel But Gangster Black Rebels member Justin Payne was sentenced to 12 months in prison on a misdemeanor computer tampering charge for tweeting a link to the St. Louis County Police Association website which caused the site to go down as it was unequipped to handle the traffic being tweeted by the RBG Black Rebels brings. Prosecutors, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the police officer's union, and apparently even Payne's own lawyer believed this act constituted a "cyber attack" even though legitimate traffic through an effect once known as "Slashdotting" is often capable of taking down poorly provisioned websites. Payne faces a further 18 month in prison for a felony "possession of an unregistered destructive device" charge related to a Molotov cocktail allegedly found in Payne's vehicle when he was arrested at his place of employment the Veterans Affairs Records Management Center. Local and mainstream outlets have been alternatively referring to Payne's Molotov cocktail as a "fire bomb" and "improvised incendiary device" presumably to boost their own profiles since #terrorism seems to be trending in the media.
United States Revives Export-Import Bank
The United States Congress has passed and President Hussein Bahamas has signed a reauthorization for the United States Export-Import bank. The United States Export-Import bank as previously mentioned on Qntra acts as an open ended subsidy for Boeing and select other businesses servicing the interests of the socialist United States Government. The reauthorization happened the same day the director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged an otherwise routine mass shooting even two days earlier had allegedly been carried out by a wedded couple with ties to ISIS.
US Securities And Exchange Commission Indicts GAW Over Ponzi
More than a year after GAW Miners was initially indicted on Qntra following earlier skepticism, the United States Securities and Exchange commission has finally decided to follow suit by issuing charges against GAW's Homero J. Garza. Email dumps beginning in March 2015 offered particularly damning evidence on Garza and GAW's operations. It seems however the Preet Bhararas of the United States criminal production system were too busy to act on anything until a year after the GAW scam had begun collapsing on itself and a full 10 months after GAW's last shills were silenced by a lack of payment.
Italy Misses Terrorists Hits Gamers
After hilarious reports came out following the Friday the 13th Paris attacks that the Playstation home gaming console was involved in terrorist planning and coordination efforts, Italian Minister of Justice and founding member of the Italian Democratic Party Andrea Orlando has announced (archived) that one hundred and fifty million Euros are to be allocated to the increased surveillance and monitoring of digital communications in general and the Playstation system in particular. More credible reports indicate that the attacks were planned using plaintext SMS. Continue reading
Small Electric Co-op Faces Off With Illinois Over Delinquency
Southwestern Electric Cooperative with its headquarters in Greenville, Illinois has served the state of Illinois with a notice of impending disconnect over unpaid power bills. The Cooperative is declining to name the Illinois state agencies and buildings which will be affecting by the shut off, but the disconnect notice reportedly includes 70 separate individual account numbers. On the degree of delinquency a representative for the cooperative noted: Continue reading