[COIN] Het grote Bitcointopic #76 | Uprising! (maar dan bijna)

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Stephen Cotton went to his local HSBC branch this month to withdraw £7,000 from his instant access savings account to pay back a loan from his mother.

A year before, he had withdrawn a larger sum in cash from HSBC without a problem.

But this time it was different, as he told Money Box: "When we presented them with the withdrawal slip, they declined to give us the money because we could not provide them with a satisfactory explanation for what the money was for. They wanted a letter from the person involved."

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Charlie Shrem, along with a co-conspirator, is accused of selling over $1 million in bitcoins to Silk Road users, who would then use them to buy drugs and other illicit items.

According to the criminal complaint, Shrem himself bought drugs on Silk Road.

"Hiding behind their computers, both defendants are charged with knowingly contributing to and facilitating anonymous drug sales, earning substantial profits along the way," DEA agent James Hunt said in a release.

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Op maandag 27 januari 2014 18:32 schreef Maxbet het volgende:
The CEO of BitInstant, a Bitcoin exchange, has been arrested at JFK airport and charged with money laundering.

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http://www.businessinside(...)ange-arrested-2014-1
http://www.justice.gov/us(...)FaiellaChargesPR.php

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Op zaterdag 25 januari 2014 17:41 schreef Maxbet het volgende:
HSBC imposes restrictions on large cash withdrawals

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25861717

Tijd voor een alternatief waar ik zelf kan bepalen wat ik met mijn geld doe. Oh wacht

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Op dinsdag 28 januari 2014 04:41 schreef heiden6 het volgende:

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Geld wat jij "op je bankrekening hebt" is een lening van jou aan de bank.

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Op donderdag 6 februari 2014 05:55 schreef kraakschandaal het volgende:
alhoewel ik blij ben met de koers van mijn bijna gratis bitcoins.

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Op donderdag 6 februari 2014 20:37 schreef kikoooooo het volgende:
Ik heb eergisteren mijn account proberen te verifiëren bij bitonic, moest daarvoor 1 eurocent overmaken dmv ideal (dat is nieuw per 3 februari geloof ik).

Nu kon ik hiervoor geen btc kopen van meer dan 50 euro met een ongeverifieerd account, dan kwam er een ideal error. Ik heb nog steeds geen bevestiging gehad dat mn account geverifieerd was, maar kon zojuist wel voor 75 euro btc kopen.

Hoe lang duurt t ongeveer voordat ik t in mn wallet heb?

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Op donderdag 6 februari 2014 20:39 schreef Maxbet het volgende:

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Beetje afhankelijk van de wallet, maar normaal gesproken zie je binnen enkele minuten de transactie verschijnen zonder confirmations. Dan is het enkel wachten op het aantal confirmations die je wallet nodig acht en kun je het uitgeven.

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Op donderdag 6 februari 2014 20:51 schreef kikoooooo het volgende:

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Hmm, dan zal mn bankrekening nog wel niet voldoende geverifieerd zijn, want er komt nog niets in mn blockchain wallet. Of ik begrijp iets niet, dat kan ook. Is de eerste keer dat ik dit doe. Hoop alleen dat ik mn 75 euro dan nog wel terugzie ergens ooit

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MtGox has detected unusual activity on its Bitcoin wallets and performed investigations during the past weeks. This confirmed the presence of transactions which need to be examined more closely.

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SiliconANGLE » ‘Bad News’ Is ‘Good News’ For Bitcoin

MIKE WHEATLEY | FEBRUARY 10TH READ MORE

Bitcoin has been hit by a spate of negative publicity in the last week or so, but while doomsayers will be rubbing their hands with glee yelling out “I told you so”, those who genuinely believe in the cryptocurrency will be quietly optimistic that this could all turn out rather well.

Bitcoin’s latest troubles began almost two weeks ago, when it was revealed that Charlie Shrem, the entrepreneur behind the exchange website BitInstant, was arrested on money laundering charges related to the infamous Silk Road online black market. It’s said that Shrem “knowingly contributed to facilitating the drug sales on Silk Road, earning substantial profits along the way”. In the wake of his arrest, BitInstant was promptly shut down, while Shrem resigned his position as the as vice chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation.

Move forward one week and Bitcoin was hit by a triple whammy, with Apple declaring war on the cryptpocurrency by removing the sole surviving Bitcoin wallet app, Blockchain, from its App Store, without any reasonable explanation. Just two days later, it was reported from various sources that Russia had “outlawed” the cryptocurrency, declaring that “the monitoring of the use of virtual currencies shows an increasing interest in them, including for the purpose of money laundering profit obtained through illegal means.”

“Russia’s official currency is the ruble. The introduction of other types of currencies and the issue of money surrogates are banned,” reported RT News.

Things finally came to a head at the weekend when Mt.Gox, the world’s best well known Bitcoin exchange, was forced to suspend all withdrawal requests. Once the go-to exchange for the virtual currency, Mt. Gox has struggled with government seizures and technical glitches in recent months, and many commentators are now speculating that this could be the beginning of the end.

Bitcoin getting stronger by the day

With so much negative press in the last couple of weeks, it’s little wonder that Bitcoin’s value has fallen by almost 20 percent in the past few days. The cryptocurrency hit a low of $659.18 on February 8, before rebounding slightly to $679.30 at the time of writing, according to Bitcoinaverage.com.

It’s tempting to think that Bitcoin is doomed to fail, as Timothy Lavin of Bloomberg confidently predicted not so long ago, but that’s missing the point completely – the point is that all of this bad news only confirms how strong Bitcoin is right now. If something as powerful as Apple bans the use of Bitcoin with its own devices, it shows us that it’s terrified of how strong Bitcoin has become. It’s the same thing in Russia – for whatever reason, lawmakers there don’t want people using Bitcoin, and they’re so worried about its rapid adoption that they’ve tried to declare it illegal – although, as TechCrunch points out, it’s likely to be only companies using Bitcoin and located in the country who will be targeted.

Some might argue that Mt. Gox’s fall from grace is further evidence of Bitcoin’s impending doom, but this theory can also be dispelled. Mt. Gox was just the first of many Bitcoin exchanges, and there are dozens of more reliable and better organized pretenders (like Kraken, Coinsetter, or CoinMKT) that are ready to step into its shoes.

The real reason that Bitcoin has been hitting the headlines so often is not because it’s weak. Rather, it’s because Bitcoin has never been stronger, supported by a growing community of users scattered all over the world, on the cusp of being legitimized by the US government, with it’s use becoming more widespread by the day. With so many people staking so much in Bitcoin, it’s little wonder that any snippet of information – good or bad – makes the headlines. The “bad news” just confirms the “good news” that Bitcoin is getting stronger by the day.

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 18:51 schreef Tourniquet het volgende:
Hectische dagen in Bitcoinland!

Wat denken jullie wat het effect zal zijn als Gox weer withdrawals en deposits gaat verwerken?

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 18:54 schreef Maxbet het volgende:

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Bankrun, geen twijfel over mogelijk imo. Dan komen we er vanzelf achter of Gox de funds wel of niet heeft.

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A “massive and concerted attack” has been launched by a bot system on numerous bitcoin exchanges, Andreas Antonopoulos has revealed.

The chief security officer of Blockchain.info said a DDoS attack is taking Bitcoin’s transaction malleability problem and applying it to many transactions in the network, simultaneously.

“So as transactions are being created, malformed/parallel transactions are also being created so as to create a fog of confusion over the entire network, which then affects almost every single implementation out there,” he added.

Antonopoulos went on to say that Blockchain.info’s implementation is not affected, but some exchanges have been affected – their internal accounting systems are gradually going out of sync with the network.

He stressed that this isn’t affecting withdrawals, because these exchanges are not processing them automatically.

Antonopoulos said we will see a few exchanges suspend withdrawals temporarily while they re-work their accounting systems to ensure they are not confused by the attack.

“It’s important to note no funds have been lost. Withdrawals have been halted to prevent funds from being lost or to prevent the balances from going out of sync,” he stressed.

Industry action

An industry-wide coordinated response has been put into action, with exchanges and core developers collaborating actively to attack the problem from multiple angles.

Various other groups within the ecosystem, including the big mining pools, are working to stop the issue from propagating across the network.

Any exchanges that are affected are working on fixing their internal systems so they correct the account balances and can resume withdrawals as soon as possible.

“I would expect to see withdrawals flowing again within 24 and 72 hours, and in the meantime, any withdrawals that were cancelled will reappear in customer account balances,” Antonopoulos explained.



Bitstamp has issued the following statement:

Dear Bitstamp users

Bitstamp’s exchange software is extremely cautious concerning Bitcoin transactions. Currently it has suspended processing Bitcoin withdrawals due to inconsistent results reported by our bitcoind wallet, caused by a denial-of-service attack using transaction malleability to temporarily disrupt balance checking. As such, Bitcoin withdrawal processing will be suspended temporarily until a software fix is issued.

No funds have been lost and no funds are at risk.

This is a denial-of-service attack made possible by some misunderstandings in the Bitcoin wallet implementation. These misunderstandings have simple solutions that are being implemented as we speak, and we’re confident everything will be back to normal shortly.

Withdrawals which failed on the 10th and 11th of February will be canceled and the amounts added back to the customer account balances.

We will communicate any further developments regarding this issue.

Thank you for your understanding!

Best regards
Bitstamp team

More to follow.

twitter:

aantonop twitterde op dinsdag 11-02-2014 om 17:43:50 Tx malleability is now used in active broad-based attack against bitcoin network. Funds NOT at risk, but Denial-of-Service in progress reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 19:08 schreef Tourniquet het volgende:

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Lijkt me ook, maar ben vooral benieuwd naar het effect daarvan en de scenario's.

1. Men heeft BTC op Gox. Verkopen op Gox lijkt me een slechte optie, dus gaat men die bitcoins op andere exchanges zetten of in een local wallet en dan verder alsof er niets is gebeurd? Of krijgen we daarna panic sells op de andere exchanges omdat men het vertrouwen kwijt is?
2. Men heeft fiat op Gox. Beste optie lijkt me dan bitcoins kopen op Gox en die wegsluizen, maar het resultaat daarvan zal zijn dat de koers van Gox weer omhoog gaat schieten. Wat zal het effect daarvan zijn bij andere exchanges? Zijn de problemen van Gox nu zo algemeen bekend dat dit genegeerd wordt of zien we ook weer stijgingen op de andere exchanges?

Heb overigens zelf ook nog wat fiat (door arbitrage) onderweg van Gox naar m'n bankrekening, dus ik hoop dat ik dat ooit nog terugzie. Zit nu in week 3, dus ongeveer op de helft van de tijd normaalgesproken.

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 19:16 schreef Maxbet het volgende:

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Volgens mij zijn er 2 scenario's.

1 Iedereen haalt alles weg bij Gox, prijs zal even dippen maar binnen 48 uur weer terugveren. Daarna gaat alles door als voorheen maar dan (vrijwel) zonder Gox.

2 Iedereen haalt alles weg bij Gox maar die blijkt de funds niet meer te hebben -> Shit hits the fan en er breken spannende tijden aan. (En ik ga bijkopen )

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 22:18 schreef MaGNeT het volgende:
Op onze eigen Frontpage:

Meer problemen voor de bitcoin

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 22:50 schreef Maxbet het volgende:

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Matig ctrl-c ctrl-v artikel
En dat terwijl er in dit subforum genoeg kennis rondloopt die ze even aan hadden kunnen schieten.

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 23:17 schreef zwartemarktplaats het volgende:
Kan ik hier aankloppen voor wat advies?

Ik heb een tijdje terug 4.5 BTC op 565 E. aangekocht. Niet voor speculatie, maar een aankoop waar ik uiteindelijk toch vanaf zie.

Als ik het nu weer zou verkopen kan ik 260 euro afschrijven.Met het oog op "spannende tijden" wat zouden jullie doen in mijn positie: het verlies nemen, of wachten tot het weer de 565 aantikt?

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 23:17 schreef zwartemarktplaats het volgende:
Kan ik hier aankloppen voor wat advies?

Ik heb een tijdje terug 4.5 BTC op 565 E. aangekocht. Niet voor speculatie, maar een aankoop waar ik uiteindelijk toch vanaf zie.

Als ik het nu weer zou verkopen kan ik 260 euro afschrijven.Met het oog op "spannende tijden" wat zouden jullie doen in mijn positie: het verlies nemen, of wachten tot het weer de 565 aantikt?

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Op dinsdag 11 februari 2014 23:17 schreef zwartemarktplaats het volgende:
Kan ik hier aankloppen voor wat advies?

Ik heb een tijdje terug 4.5 BTC op 565 E. aangekocht. Niet voor speculatie, maar een aankoop waar ik uiteindelijk toch vanaf zie.

Als ik het nu weer zou verkopen kan ik 260 euro afschrijven.Met het oog op "spannende tijden" wat zouden jullie doen in mijn positie: het verlies nemen, of wachten tot het weer de 565 aantikt?

twitter:

BTCFoundation twitterde op woensdag 12-02-2014 om 00:21:48 Update on Transaction Malleability @gavinandresen http://t.co/JKvgUsZlB8 reageer retweet

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Update on Transaction Malleability
Gavin Andresen Feb 12 2014

You may have noticed that some exchanges have temporarily suspended withdrawals and wondering what’s going on or more importantly, what’s being done about it. You can be rest assured that we have identified the issue and are collectively and collaboratively working on a solution.

Somebody (or several somebodies) is taking advantage of the transaction malleability issue and relaying mutated versions of transactions. This is exposing bugs in both the reference implementation and some exchange’s software.

We (core dev team, developers at the exchanges, and even big mining pools) are creating workarounds and fixes right now. This is a denial-of-service attack; whoever is doing this is not stealing coins, but is succeeding in preventing some transactions from confirming. It’s important to note that DoS attacks do not affect people’s bitcoin wallets or funds.

Users of the reference implementation who are bitten by this bug may see their bitcoins “tied up” in unconfirmed transactions; we need to update the software to fix that bug, so when they upgrade those coins are returned to the wallet and are available to spend again. Only users who make multiple transactions in a short period of time will be affected.

As a result, exchanges are temporarily suspending withdrawals to protect customer funds and prevent funds from being misdirected.

Thanks for your patience. Follow us @BTCFoundation for updates as we learn more and make progress.

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Dear Bitstamp clients,

A denial-of-service attack caused us to suspend the processing of Bitcoin withdrawals. Bitstamp, with help from the Bitcoin core developers, has implemented a solution that passes our preliminary tests and audits.

After additional testing, we plan to enable Bitcoin withdraws later today.

Thank you for your understanding!

Best regards,

The Bitstamp team

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Hash: SHA512

I am sweating as I write this.

Christmas brought grave news. I cannot adequately express how deeply honored I was by your unconditional support of my staff.

I do not expect the same reaction to today's revelations. This movement is built on integrity, and I feel obligated to be forthright with you.

I held myself to a high standard as your leader, yet now I must utter words all too familiar to this scarred community:

We have been hacked.

Nobody is in danger, no information has been leaked, and server access was never obtained by the attacker.

Our initial investigations indicate that a vendor exploited a recently discovered vulnerability in the Bitcoin protocol known as "transaction malleability" to repeatedly withdraw coins from our system until it was completely empty.

Despite our hardening and pentesting procedures, this attack vector was outside of penetration testing scope due to being rooted in the Bitcoin protocol itself.

This attack hit us at the worst possible time. We were planning on re-launching the new auto-finalize and Dispute Center this past weekend, and our projections of order finalization volume indicated that we would need the community's full balance in hot storage.

In retrospect this was incredibly foolish, and I take full responsibility for this decision.

I have failed you as a leader, and am completely devastated by today's discoveries. I should have taken MtGox and Bitstamp's lead and disabled withdrawals as soon as the malleability issue was reported. I was slow to respond and too skeptical of the possible issue at hand. It is a crushing blow. I cannot find the words to express how deeply I want this movement to be safe from the very threats I just watched materialize during my watch.

I've included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor's dishonest actions and use whatever means you deem necessary to bring this person to justice. More details will emerge as we continue to investigate.

Given the right flavor of influence from our community, we can only hope that he will decide to return the coins with integrity as opposed to hiding like a coward.

It takes the integrity of all of us to push this movement forward. Whoever you are, you still have a chance to act in the interest of helping this community. Keep a percentage, return the rest. Don't walk away with your fellow freedom fighters' coins. DPR2 returned the cold storage. I didn't run with the gold. But two people alone cannot move us forward. It takes an entire community committing to integrity - and though this crushing blow will not stop us, it sure is a testament to how greedy some bastards truly are.

Being a part of this movement might be the most defining thing you do with your entire life.

Don't trade that for greed, comrades.

I will fight here by your side, even the greedy bastards amongst us.

This community has suffered great financial loss over and over again, and I am devastated that it has happened again under my watch.

Hindsight is already suggesting dozens of ways this could have been prevented, but we must march onward.

The only way to reverse a community's greed is through generosity. Our true character is revealed during trying times.

If this financial hardship places you at risk of physical harm, contact me directly and I will do my best to help you with my remaining personal funds.

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Now what.

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Never again store your escrow bitcoins on a server.

Silk Road will never again be a centralized escrow storage.

This week has shown the collateral damage we can cause by being a huge target and failing in just one unforeseen area.

I am now fully convinced that no hosted escrow service is safe.

If I cannot trust myself to keep a hosted escrow solution safe, I cannot trust anyone.

Multi-signature transactions are the only way this community will be protected long-term.

I am aggressively tasking our devs on building out multi-sig support for commonly-used bitcoin clients. Expect a generous bounty if you have the skill to implement this.

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Until then.

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1. We will never again allow ourselves to be a single point of failure. We will never again host your Escrow wallets.

2. Vendor registration is closed while we regroup.

3. All listings on Silk Road are now No-Escrow (Finalize-Early) for 1-2 months while we implement multi-signature transactions and lobby for mainstream Bitcoin client multi-sig support.

4. All unshipped orders have been cancelled.

5. Vendors may link to other marketplaces on a trail basis until we launch multi-sig, then we will re-evaluate based on community input. We do not want to be a centralized point of failure, but we also do not want to lead our buyers into dangerous waters.

6. From this point forward DO NOT trust markets with centralized escrow. Use multi-signature transactions whenever possible, with trusted third parties as escrow providers.

Everything will be offline for 24-48 hours to minimize variables as we continue to investigate. The evidence we have below will be expanded based on our findings.

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No marketplace is perfect. Expect any centralized market to fail at some point. This is precisely why we must unite in the decision to decentralize.

We are relieved that our security procedures protected user identities, and that no servers were compromised. This was not a worst-case scenario: nobody will be getting arrested from this. Financial loss is terrible, but will not put all of us behind bars.

The details we have on the hacker are below. Stop at nothing to bring this person to your own definition of justice.

Humbled and furious,

Defcon

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# Attacker Intel as of 2014-02-13 18:00:00 UTC

We normally do not doxx anyone, and hold user information sacred. But this is an extreme situation affecting our entire community, and all three users who have exploited this vulnerability are very much at risk until they approach us directly to assist with any information.

Do not reveal any details of the attack. This will jeopardize your reward. Contact us directly.

If anyone has purchased or sold to these usernames, expect generous bounties for any information you can contribute which leads to identification.

# Attacker 1: (Responsible for 95% of theft)
Suspected French, responsible for vast majority of the thefts. Used the following six vendor accounts to order from each other, to find and exploit the vulnerability aggressively.

## Usernames used:
narco93
ketama
riccola
germancoke
napolicoke
smokinglife

Transactions listed at bottom of this file. Finding Attacker 1 is top priority.

# Attacker 2: (Responsible for ~2.5% of theft, using same methods towards end of attack lifecycle, likely knows Attacker 1)
LethalWeapon - Australia - "stumbled upon" large amount of BTC

# Attacker 3: (Responsible for ~2.5% of theft, using same methods towards end of attack lifecycle, likely knows Attacker 1)
mrkermit - Australia

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Op woensdag 12 februari 2014 00:33 schreef Tourniquet het volgende:

twitter:

BTCFoundation twitterde op woensdag 12-02-2014 om 00:21:48 Update on Transaction Malleability @gavinandresen http://t.co/JKvgUsZlB8 reageer retweet

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