New Mac OS Trojan Produces BitCoins

angry tapir writes about an interesting use for malware. From the Techworld article: "A newly identified Mac OS X Trojan bundles a component that leverages the processing power of video cards to generate Bitcoins, a popular type of virtual currency. The new Trojan was dubbed DevilRobber by antivirus vendors and is being distributed together with several software applications via BitTorrent sites."

Follow the Trail

[igreaterthanu]

As BitCoin transactions aren't anonymous, in fact they are completely public, it would be trivial to follow where the BitCoins end up - hopefully to catch the malware author.

Re:Just works!

[meerling]

There are very very few new viruses anymore, it's been like that for years. The problem is the media calls bloody everything a virus, even program glitches on occasion.
But it is malware, and it's a lot more than just a trojan. It's also backdoor, and phisher. It's a nasty little package, especially for anyone that thinks macs are immune.
Didn't see any mention of it having and poison pill functions if someone tries to remove it.

Re:Joke's on them.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're stealing electricity from their workplace to do pointless busywork for bitcoins, that seems like a net loss for society. Unless they work for Holocaust Enterprises LLC. or something.

Re:Follow the Trail

[BitZtream]

If I was doing this, I would have done it just to be a dick, not to profit. That means I'd make it run on a Mac just to go along with the 'macs don't get viruses' meme, and I'd do bit coin mining for no reason other than to devalue it into oblivion because I'm sick Of seeing silly arguments over fiat currancies versus gold backed ones.

Not everything is about monetary gain. Sometimes people are just dicks.

Re:You laugh, and we profit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Still laughing.

Keep bragging about your little play money and your scam coins. If it were really that simple, we'd be hearing about this all over reputable financial publications.

Reputable. Not Turbo-Libertarian Weekly, or Stoner Monthly. We'd have news of millionaires pouring in from all over the globe. Not a few whispers from scam artists who make up unverifiable stories to make themselves feel better for wasting thousands on high-end GPUs, "killer" computing rigs, and electricity for literally no useful reason.

So yes. Laughing. Peddle your Flooz elsewhere.

Not popular, not currency

[GrandCow]

Bitcoin is in a lot of trouble at the moment.

It is not popular, since the speculators have mostly disappeared at this point. They got in on the market upswing, moving the price to almost $30 per bitcoin for a brief moment. As soon as the speculators reached their plateau, the sell-off began. Bitcoins are selling for 5-10% of what they were selling at their peak. You can expect to get between $1.50 and $3.00 per bitcoin at this point. The true believers still claim that it's coming back, but a single look at any price graph shows that in the end, anything you put into bitcoin is a lost cause. The price continues to drop as more people get out and sell what they have, plus the people "mining" bitcoins selling at whatever the current lowest price is. ALL of the major exchanges have been "hacked" at some point. I say this in quotes because there has never been any proof that the owners of each exchange didn't just decide to take the money and run, which they could have done at any time with ZERO repercussions. One of the larger exchanges was blatant enough to take everything but offer 49% back of what you lost if you'd just use them again (but accept the service fees), as opposed to the others that just delete the website and sell the coins on other markets.

The reason that this is all possible is: bitcoin isn't a currency! It is the same as trading rocks with numbers painted on them to say how much they are worth; this means there is no regulation. It's not anywhere near any other currency in the world because it doesn't have a government backing up it's value. As much as the different sites claim that it is going to change the world, bitcoin itself is being challenged in court and both results are bad for it. If it is declared a currency, the regulations alone will destroy it. If it is declared not a currency (which it is not), it will be destroyed by all sorts of fraud charges.

Stay away from bitcoin at all costs.

Re:Not popular, not currency

[DrXym]

Of course it is in trouble. It's always been in trouble. It's naively implemented, the client software was insecure, many of the exchanges were insecure, it faced (and still does) huge regulatory questions, it was a magnet for scammers, hackers & drug dealers, it was hyped through group think into a huge bubble which has since collapsed, people hoarded coins rather than spending them and are now panic selling, and the system itself has many of the characteristics of a ponzi / pyramid scheme. I'm sure some people profited from it, and many more didn't. It's a broken system and this much has been obvious for a long time.

Re:Just works!

[BasilBrush]

especially for anyone that thinks macs are immune.

It's not people who think Macs are immune that are in danger. It's people who are downloading warez from bittorrent.