New Ransomware Strain is Locking Up Bitcoin Mining Rigs in China (zdnet.com) 86
A new strain of ransomware has been observed targeting Bitcoin mining rigs. ZDNet reports: At the time of writing, most of the infections have been reported in China, the country where most of the world's cryptocurrency mining farms are located. Named hAnt, this new ransomware strain was first seen in August of last year, but a new wave of infections has been reported hitting mining farms earlier this month. Most of the infected mining rigs are Antminer S9 and T9 devices, used for Bitcoin mining, but there have also been reports of hAnt infecting Antminer L3 rigs, used for mining Litecoin. In rare instances, Avalon Miner equipment (used for Bitcoin), were also reported as infected, but in much smaller numbers.
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How do they want to be paid? (Score:4, Funny)
Bitcoin or real money?
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What a meaningless comment. Did you know that the imperial measurement system is superior to the metric one, because a mile is longer than a kilometer?
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And you still missed that real money isn't real.
Maybe so but that doesn't mean it's exactly equal to Bitcoin. On a scale of 0 to 10 it scores very, very close to 10 and Bitcoin only scores a 0.01 (at best).
(judging by the number of places that you can simply walk in and spend some)
That's what you're missing.
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The ONLY value associated [with "real money" - in this case, fiat currency] is that which is assigned to it by those that can provide the services/good trade, otherwise, they're just meaningless digits.
That's true of ANYTHING, including the goods and services. The value of anything is what someone is willing to trade it for / for it.
The thing that makes money "money" is that it a commodity that is valued by many (at roughly the same value), stable valued (in the short term) and easily divisible, so a barte
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it only has value because someone says it does
I say the wadded up post-it note in front of me is money, will you give me $1000US for it?
It's only money if other people agree that it is. Bitcoin was never money. It's just speculation, like beanie babies.
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It's only money if other people agree that it is. Bitcoin was never money.
The IRS says that for federal tax purposes, Bitcoin is the same as currency. That would seem to imply that Bitcoin is, in fact, money...
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The IRS says that for federal tax purposes, Bitcoin is the same as currency. That would seem to imply that Bitcoin is, in fact, money...
The government made me pay $5 to register my god damn drone. So far, my drone flying hobby has done nothing but cost me money - it is completely unprofitable, yet "taxed" nevertheless. Uncle Sam just sees Bitcoin as an opportunity to collect more tax revenue from people who likely have more dollars than sense. I'm sure the government would put a tax on farting, if they could find a way to enforce it.
Bitcoin will be real (Score:2)
Bitcoin will be approaching "real" when you can buy the hardware to mine it and pay for the electricity to run it in bitcoin.
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As the value of Bitcoin rose a bit, I used my Bitcoin to buy a couple Sapphire Block Erupters (back when the hashrate for them was respectable). This netted me a few more coins...
At some point, I cashed out (waaaaaay too early). The results were enough to pay my power bill for a couple months and a shiny new Nexus 7 tablet...
Does that mean it's real?
If you can't beat 'em, pwn 'em? (Score:2)
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I'd say it government, namely Beijing. They have seen BTC as a direct threat to their banking system and have taken action in the past to minimize the damage they are doing. And now, they decided to take a cloak and dagger approach to dealing with them. No surprise.
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Or the attack launched by some evildoer who is also a a Bitcoin Cash or other AltCoin proponent.
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Definitely feasible. Other currencies have been hit by 51% attacks and compromised with bogus double-spending transactions. Since China has 51% control of Bitcoin anyway, this could easily allow them to manipulate it by adding more currency or double-spending existing coins. And with 300 gigs of blockchain, few people are going to validate all the way to check for hanky-panky.
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holding for ransom, locking it up so it's not running, the thing that'll produce the coins to pay the ransom
Seems like the smarter thing to do would have been to subvert a coin every so often to a different location, since you already have control of the machine. That way it'll go undetected for a while and they'll probably make more than the ransom payout would have been.
Maybe, as some have suggested above, this is about more than ransom money.
It could be that they saw mining rigs as particularly vulnerable... or it could be they have a deeper motive.
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If it was not for a deeper motive, then why wouldn't they simply reprogram them to start diverting some mining power to benefit the attacker and
try to avoid detection?
The mining hardware would be much more valuable mining something for the attacker than sitting locked up waiting for a ransom --- for
the ransom to be worthwhile, it would have to be large enough that would also make it worthwhile for the mining operator to actually erase and reprogram the
device's firmware instead of paying that ransom.
Fan Control (Score:4, Insightful)
If victims fail to pay the ransom or infect at least 1,000 other devices, the ransom note threatens to turn off the mining rig's fan and its overheat protection, leading to the device's destruction.
If this happened to one of my devices, the first thing I'd be doing is attaching the fan(s) directly to the power supply. You won't get any fan regulation, and possibly a lot of fan noise, but you won't need to worry about overheating.
Also, people who write ransomware are callous scum.
Any takers on the source? (Score:2)
I'd say Beijing is up to their old tricks to try to eliminate competition to their banking system?
Lights across China (Score:2)
And suddenly light bulbs in China got a little brighter.
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...about not understanding bitcoin and how it must be literally tulips...
Actually, it would be amusing if someone created a Tulipcoin.
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Prepare to be amused
https://tulipcoins.github.io
Been a thing for a while!
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Prepare to be amused
I am amused.
Ransomware vs Bitcoin. Popcorn! (Score:2)
So it's going to be ransomware thugs versus the Bitcoin community of child porn sites, drug traders, basement-dwelling conspiracy theorists - and yes, other ransomware developers who use Bitcoin to get ransom payments without being traced. All the scams in the world collapsing into a black hole as the rest of us applaud.
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Windows ransomware? What would possess somebody to run a mining rig on Windows? I can only think of disadvantages.
Good (Score:2)
The fewer of these resistive heaters we have sucking otherwise useful energy and further warming our planet the better.