It was after Juniper burned a vulnerability in its products used to support NSA and GCHQ spying, and after independent researchers discovered the nature of the back door (archived) that Glen Greenwald, formerly of the Guardian, revealed that this vulnerability was in a stash of disclosures he received more than two years ago from Edward Snowden. Greenwald's reveal came six days after Juniper disclosed the existence of the backdoor and a day after independent researches began presenting serious evidence indicating the backdoor was born in the USA. Continue reading
Category Archives: Shitware
Warning: "Escrow Service" Goes On Sale
Cointelegraph brings us news that a web platform advertising itself as an "escrow service" has been put up for auction (archived). In this press release, the service BTCrow advertises a claims it is the first and most trusted platform while further disclosing it has been sold before. Of course trust isn't a transitive property and attaches to people rather than platforms so any remaining users of the BTCrow service would be well advised to escape the platform while they still can.
CoinBase Bug Bonanza
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
Dark Horse Brian Forde Tops CoinDesk's 2015 Influencer List
In the CoinDesk ranking of "most influential" people "in Bitcoin and Blockchain" allegedly determined through a reader vote, dark horse candidate Brian Forde won by coming in second only to obligatory first place winner Satoshi Nakamoto (archived). Forde is the director of MIT's Digital Currency Initiative, the Ford Edsel (archived) of organizations orbiting and trying to subvert Bitcoin.
Forde's tenure at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative precedes that of Gavin Andresen by only a week with Forde arriving on April 15th while Gavin joined up a week later. Prior to arriving in this corner of the MIT Media lab Forde worked in the White House for the Hussein Bahamas administration where as per his MIT biography: Continue reading
Clinton Sells Nuking Math
As the steak warm flystruck hamburger meat that is 2016 United States Presidential election continues its multi-year sizzle on the grill of public opinion, leading candidates from both sides of the divide are hustling hard for clicks, likes, headlines, and anything else that their analysts can measure. Continue reading
Payment Card Industry Clings To SSLv3 And TLS 1.0 For Two More Years
Yesterday the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) announced it has decided to extend its deadline for the fiat payment card industry to abandon SSL version 3 and TLS version 1.0 all the way into June of 2018 (archived). Back in April they had tried to set a June 2016 deadline parties handling fiat payment cards to move up to at least TLS version 1.1 or higher in light of POODLE, SHA1 weakness, and other protocol level attacks. General Manager Stephen Orfei of the PCI SSC blames "business issues" for the extension. These extra two years create the potential for massive fraud involving intercepted payment card information, but massive fraud is an inherent part of the fiat system.
New Terror Alert And Accelerated Anti-Internet Rhetoric
Today the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a new "National Terrorism Advisory System" bulletin (archived). The bulletin is the first in a new system of terror warnings in the United States. It offers a simple summary: Continue reading
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.
Withdrawal Fees For Changetip Starting
Today social media spamming service Changetip in a bid to generate revenue from users is set to begin charging a one percent withdrawal fee. For Bitcoin withdrawals the fee is on top of any transaction fee required to commit the withdrawal transaction to the blockchain. Changetip has struggled to maintain its early momentum in light of the general human aversion to spam, and they have even gone so far as to employ a /r/Bitcoin moderator in an effort to avoid complete shunning.
Guardian Malware Article Redirects To Malware
Reports are emerging that an article at the Guardian titled "Cybercrime: is it out of control?" exposes readers to malware (archived). Continue reading