New Bitcoin Skype Malware Spreading At 2,000 Clicks Per Hour

New Bitcoin Skype Malware Spreading At 2,000 Clicks Per Hour

storyfic.com

A new piece of malware is rocking the Internet society now as it has been found that it is spreading through Skype which basically uses the infected computers to mine for Bitcoins and then make the owner of the malware money. It was discovered by by security firm Kaspersky, the malware is named “Trojan.Win32.Jorik.IRCbot.xkt,” and is spreading at an alarming rate.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Keep an eye on it,folks.Looks to be a bit of a nasty attack going down.

It explains why there are some sites that I go to are not working right now.

The most affected countries are Italy, Russia, Poland, Costa Rica, Spain, Germany, and Ukraine.

I don't think it has affected the US yet,though.

storyfic.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Yet another reason to not use bitcoin. Put your money into something you can hold in your hand like gold or silver not into something that can disappear due to malware or the net going down.

reply to post by kdog1982


I saw this, left me wondering if this was the activity people were noticing with skype
doing stuff in the background....? Most likely yes.

Originally posted by buster2010
Yet another reason to not use bitcoin. Put your money into something you can hold in your hand like gold or silver not into something that can disappear due to malware or the net going down.

I have a hard time understanding the concept of bitcoins and how it can be used as a currency.
But,I'm with you,give me something I can use in my hands,be it dollars,gold,or weapons and food.

Originally posted by burntheships
reply to post by kdog1982

 

I saw this, left me wondering if this was the activity people were noticing with skype
doing stuff in the background....? Most likely yes.

I don't skype all that much,but you are probably right .
But I ask,how do you get bitcoins?

reply to post by buster2010


It wouldn't affect your bitcoins really. It is basically just using other computers to do the work to create bitcoins for the owner. It isn't stealing bitcoins from the users. So they aren't disappearing "due to malware."

I am not a fan of digital currency, but I wouldn't consider this a great threat unless it hit such a widescale that the amount it was mining caused a sharp influx of the currency. I think bitcoins have a limit though, so someone is getting while the getting is good, they are turning computers into slave workers basically, but the work that goes into the creation of the "resource" is still being done. The bitcoins aren't being stolen or counterfeited.

Originally posted by buster2010
Yet another reason to not use bitcoin. Put your money into something you can hold in your hand like gold or silver not into something that can disappear due to malware or the net going down.

That's not a reason not to use bitcoin. that's a reason not to download viruses like an idiot.

reply to post by kdog1982


Perhaps I can explain it better for you?

Bitcoin as a currency cannot be manipulated, outside of the value the consumer places on them. For instance, the bitcoin market could never be manipulated by a person. It would only come to change if the markets change.

Much like how our economic system is supposed to work.

The # of bitcoins isn't infinite either, its finite. There is a set schedule and eventually, unless something is done, there will be no more 'mining' bit coins and there will be no more adding to the currency.

The beautiful thing about bitcoin is that there isn't a secret cabal of people pulling the strings behind closed doors. Yes the market can be volatile, proven by the price jump over the last several weeks, but there is no risk of manipulation from the banking industry, other than driving it up in value due to people's mistrust in the current system.

Many countries, including my own here in Canada are developing digital currencies similar to bit coin.

Bitcoin is not managed like typical currencies: it has no central bank or central organization. Instead, it relies on an internet-based peer-to-peer network. The money supply is automated and given to servers or "bitcoin miners" that confirm bitcoin transactions as they add them to a decentralized and archived transaction log approximately every 10 minutes.

The log is authenticated by end-users through hashed ECDSA digital signatures (similar to a username and password) and confirmed by intense calculations of varying difficulty, performed by dedicated servers called bitcoin miners. Each 10-minute portion or "block" of the transaction log has an assigned money supply that is awarded to the miners once a "block" is confirmed. The amount per block depends on how long the network has been running and how much in transaction fees has been paid. Currently, 25 new bitcoins are generated with every 10-minute block. This will be halved to 12.5 BTC during the year 2017 and halved continuously every 4 years after until a hard limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached during the year 2140.[1][12]

The benefits are quite clear if you understand the technology behind it.

So that's the gist.

ETA: as for the article, well the malware is very common and bitcoin farms aren't few and far between.

I ran one temporarily where people paid me to mine bitcoins for them using high end gaming machines.

These people are doing hte same, but with anybody's PC, which unless you have thousands upon thousands or even millions of people, you won't get very far concerning the complexity of the algorithms.

~Tenth

reply to post by kdog1982


Beginners Guide To Bitcoin.

All you need to know.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Thank you.



I see,said the blind man.

Originally posted by SilentKoala

Originally posted by buster2010
Yet another reason to not use bitcoin. Put your money into something you can hold in your hand like gold or silver not into something that can disappear due to malware or the net going down.

That's not a reason not to use bitcoin. that's a reason not to download viruses like an idiot.

Ever hear of the net crashing and it has already been hacked once before.

Originally posted by tothetenthpower
reply to post by kdog1982

 

Perhaps I can explain it better for you?

Bitcoin as a currency cannot be manipulated, outside of the value the consumer places on them. For instance, the bitcoin market could never be manipulated by a person. It would only come to change if the markets change.

You're definitely going to need to explain to me how a system of currency that only exists in electronic bits dependent on the electrical and IT infrastructure is "impossible to manipulate", especially given the unbelievably shady and insecure history of bitcoin and the fact that it has already experienced dizzying bubbles and bursts due to people artificially inflating it either by hacking, or by buying so many at one time (because the pool is much smaller than any other currency or commodity) that the value shoots up in a day, and then selling all of them and leaving the bitcoin "market" in the toilet for quite a while.

You want to play a part in ushering in the untraceable, unprovable, totally-at-their-whim system of telling us to bend over instead of putting something of intrinsic value in our hands? Go ahead, but it's not the "currency of the people" any more than a fiat Fed system with the presses in the hands of the "L33t" is. Except with bitcoin, the L33t are teenagers. Greeeeat.

Originally posted by buster2010

Originally posted by SilentKoala

Originally posted by buster2010
Yet another reason to not use bitcoin. Put your money into something you can hold in your hand like gold or silver not into something that can disappear due to malware or the net going down.

That's not a reason not to use bitcoin. that's a reason not to download viruses like an idiot.

Ever hear of the net crashing and it has already been hacked once before.

Wrong. The protocol itself has never been hacked. That would involve cracking AES256 encryption which the collective computing power of the planet could not do in the amount of time the earth has existed.

You are referring to an exchange that was hacked where a small number of users lost funds from remotely hosted wallets (which are not a good idea to use), not the bitcoin network itself.

I wouldn't be surprise of some Government alphabets where the responsible parties involved in trying anyway they can to shmear the bitcoin name.

Its decentralized and potentially untraceable and Governments hate what they dont have control over.

There needs to be 2-3 more competing currencies built exactly the same way

Originally posted by dominicus
I wouldn't be surprise of some Government alphabets where the responsible parties involved in trying anyway they can to shmear the bitcoin name.

Its decentralized and potentially untraceable and Governments hate what they dont have control over.

There needs to be 2-3 more competing currencies built exactly the same way

I don't think this is the case. In fact, some have speculated that they are silently promoting it.

I don't personally care who is promoting it and who isn't; to me it is just an innovative and vastly superior way of doing things. Just like how peer-to-peer is a more efficient and more secure model than the client-server model, a decentralized monetary system is more efficient and more secure than the central banking model.

Originally posted by dominicus
I wouldn't be surprise of some Government alphabets where the responsible parties involved in trying anyway they can to shmear the bitcoin name.

Its decentralized and potentially untraceable and Governments hate what they dont have control over.

There needs to be 2-3 more competing currencies built exactly the same way

Bitcoins are untraceable so long as you don't want to turn them into a currency that 99.9% of the world actually accepts. Then, well, it gets a little hairy.

For a website like ATS that understands that literally everything on the internet is traceable even with the "strongest" encryption (the idea that YOU are allowed to use an encryption that the CIA has not cracked is hilarious), I scratch my head at the bowing-down to bitcoin here. Go ahead and buy some bitcoins at $120 today. Then we'll see where you are a month from now, if you can find a grocery store that accepts them in the meantime.

Show me the bitcoin I can use after the government has shut it [the internet/electric grid/currency trading/markets/e-commerce/etc] off? Oh......yeah......

You think Cyprus got the axe from trusting their deposits? lulz......

Originally posted by buster2010
Yet another reason to not use bitcoin. Put your money into something you can hold in your hand like gold or silver not into something that can disappear due to malware or the net going down.

So true. Why would anyone invest money into an obscure currency that is not accepted in many places and can go away in seconds? Go down to your local coin dealer and buy silver. When the SHTF you can use it to survive. When the Euro fails and the US dollar goes down silver and gold are the only 2 things that will buy you anything.

Why do you think all the major countries/banks are buying gold and silver with worthless paper money? They know what's going to happen and they want to secure their future.

Originally posted by SilentKoala

Originally posted by dominicus
I wouldn't be surprise of some Government alphabets where the responsible parties involved in trying anyway they can to shmear the bitcoin name.

Its decentralized and potentially untraceable and Governments hate what they dont have control over.

There needs to be 2-3 more competing currencies built exactly the same way

I don't think this is the case. In fact, some have speculated that they are silently promoting it.

I don't personally care who is promoting it and who isn't; to me it is just an innovative and vastly superior way of doing things. Just like how peer-to-peer is a more efficient and more secure model than the client-server model, a decentralized monetary system is more efficient and more secure than the central banking model.

Well, IF and WHEN the dollar collapses and the internet is shut down let's see how well you do with your Bitcoins....

reply to post by kdog1982
Apparently this isn't the only virus that is making the rounds via Skype. A little over a week ago Skype tried to give me a "black hole" virus. Thankfully my anti-virus and malware programs were on top of it and nipped it in the butt, but I ran full scans of everything in my arsenal just to be on the safe side afterward. I would advise people to make sure they keep all of their defense programs up to date with the latest definitions.

It really ticked me off because I use Skype regularly and you would think they would have better defense systems, but I guess nowadays everyone is vulnerable. There is no such thing as a "safe site" anymore.