Prosecutor for Warrick County Michael J. Perry last week released a public statement claiming that shortly after taking office, he became aware of the fact that the ransomware known as cryptolocker had infected computers belonging to the Prosecutor's Office but that the security breach had been covered up by a Ms JoAnn Krantz, the elected Prosecutor at the time of the infection. Ms Krantz is also alleged to have directed employees of the Warrick County Prosecutor's Office not to discuss the ransom demands paid in bitcoin with anyone, telling her staff by email that: Continue reading
More Trouble For Bryan Micon
Bluff Magazine reports (archive) that Bryan Micon of the defunct poker website Seals with Clubs was charged Monday with operating an unlicensed interactive gaming system for his part in the operation of SwC. The charge comes two months after operational security concerns forced the original SwC poker site offline citing operation security concerns by way of the Nevada Gaming Commission and their thugs who took a sledge hammer to Micon's front door. Continue reading
Prosecution Shenanigans Continue as Ulbricht Sentencing Approaches
As the scheduled May 15th sentencing for Ross Ulbricht approaches Preet Bharara's office is once again engaging in brinkmanship and shenanigans aimed at subverting actual applications of justice. At the sentencing hearing the prosecution plans to present new evidence, which apparently wasn't good enough for the trial, that supposedly links six overdose deaths to drugs allegedly purchased on the Silk Road. Ulbricht's attorney Josh Dratel has requested the sentencing be delayed another month to prepare a response to the government's latest assertion. Continue reading
Deloitte: A Bitcoin Successor Is The Future Of Payments
Authored by William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan of Deloitte, a document titled "Gov2020: A Journey into the Future of Government" details possible and probable changes to our society which await future would be governments. These changes, categorised as drivers which change the context in which government operates and trends which result in a shift in how government currently acts includes topics such as: Continue reading
BitGo Bug Results In Loss Of User Funds By Way Of 85 BTC Fee
BitGo Software Engineer Benedict Chan has detailed a bug in the company's recovery script which earlier today caused the loss of 85 BTC to new /r/bitcoin user rstn. The bug caused the bulk of rstn's coins to be included as a fee. Chan writes (archive): Continue reading
New Web of Trust Web Explorer
At the third annual Bitcoin Conference mike_c unveiled a new web based explorer for the #bitcoin-assets Web of Trust maintained by Kakobrekla's assbot. In his announcement mike_c gives an overview of many of the tool's new features and some of the historical context that created an impetus for this tool's creation. The Btc Alpha WoT Explorer went live to the public overnight.
Ransomware Inception
CBC News reports (archive) that a Quebec family which paid a bitcoin ransom not once but twice still failed to recover their treasured family photos despite paying 5 BTC.
Upon reading the Cryptowall notification that their files had been encrypted and that a ransom was required to be paid if they wished to reclaim them, the couple took their PC to a local repair store which confirmed the legitimacy of the threat. Continue reading
MtGox Trustee has 200k Bitcoins, Creditors to Line Up as Bankruptcy Progresses
As of the third creditors meeting on April 22, 2015, the approximately 100,000 creditors from 130 countries who were swindled by Robert Marie Mark Karpeles and his Bitcoin-fiat exchange MtGox Co., Ltd. – despite the numerous and several warnings and warning signs,1 – can now file claims through bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayash of law firm Nagashima Ohno & Tsudematsu. Continue reading
Not the least of which was the consistent $10+ spread between Mt Gox and Bitstamp that persisted throughout 2013, with the premium going to Gox of course, indicating that the Japanese firm was delaying withdrawals, most probably on account of a fractional reserve deposit scheme ↩
Vessenes Foundation Draws Near Its End, Vessenes Out As Chairman
The decline of the Vessenes Bitcoin Foundation continues with their developers leaving for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative. In what appears to be an attempt to revitalize their image by amping up their star power the Vessenes foundation has replaced Peter Vessenes as their chairman with First Kid co-star Brock Pierce.
Windows Servers Pwn'd By JPEG Uploads
The Register reports that researcher Marcus Murray has demonstrated an attack which allows malicious parties to take control of servers running modern versions of Microsoft Windows Server by uploading JPEG images. Murray demonstrated this attack at the RSA San Francisco conference and asserts he used this same method on a photo upload portal to crack a United States Government agency's web server. This is one of many ways Microsoft Windows has shown itself to be unsafe for any purpose.