CryptoThrift Suspends Escrow Service, Coins Lost in Breach

Auction site CryptoThrift has announced that they have lost more than 15 BTC in a breach of a hot wallet they used for keeping coins in escrow. The incident happens nearly one year after Bitmit, another auction site was hacked for a similar amount. Bitmit shutdown after the operators could not find a buyer who could cover losses. According to CoinThrift the attack occurred early the morning of October 5th but went undiscovered for some time. They report contacting Australian Federal Police about the incident.

RockMiner R4 Devices Seized at Customs, One Person Detained

Four Rockminer R4 Bitcoin miners were seized by the Customs Service in Chita, Russia along with the Russian Citizen transporting them according to a report by Coinside.ru's Maxim Primakov. According to the report this action may be supposed to be the beginning of a practical campaign against Bitcoin by the Russian Government following longstanding rhetorical opposition to Bitcoin by elements of the Russian Government.

Coinside's report offers hope that Customs officials along the European border may be less capable or inclined to seize Bitcoin mining devices, but cautions their readers about having mining devices delivered by Russian Post as the time taken to receive a Bitcoin miner is a critical factor that affects its possibility to mine profitably.

Silk Road Lawyers Challenge Justice Department "Leaky Captcha Theory"

The defense team for Ross Ulbricht is challenging the assertion by the prosecution in a filing last month that the Silk Road servers and eventually the alleged Silk Road mastermind was found due to a leaky misconfigured captcha on the site. Among the documents released challenging the Government's assertion are configuration files and traffic logs according to Brian Krebs.