Cyber caper: behind the scenes of the $45 million global ATM heist

Cyber caper: behind the scenes of the $45 million global ATM heist | The Verge.

By Adrianne Jeffries

http://www.theverge.com

on May 13, 2013

23
inShare

Defendants Elvis Rafael Rodriguez and Emir Yasser Yeje posing with approximately $40,000 with cash. Source: US Attorney, Eastern District of New York

If you’d been waiting for the ATM inside the deli at East 59th and Third in Manhattan on Tuesday, February 19th around 9:24PM, you would have been annoyed. A young man in a black beanie and puffy black jacket made seven withdrawals in a row, stuffing around $5,620 into his blue backpack. The man wasted no time. He exited the deli and headed up five blocks to repeat the process at four more ATMs, finishing his route at a Chase bank at 69th and Third at 9:55PM, where he made four withdrawals totaling $4,000.

While the man in the black beanie was beelining along the Upper East Side, seven of his co-conspirators were doing the same thing across Manhattan, repeatedly swiping prepaid debit cards that seemed to be limitless. An unknown number of fellow “cashiers” were doing the same thing in Japan and 24 other countries around the world at the same time. The cashiers in Japan were pulling in even greater hauls, thanks to the $10,000 withdrawal limits at some machines.

A shadowy criminal ring netted nearly $45 million in cash

The man in the black beanie was part of a sophisticated “Unlimited Operation,” according to prosecutors in New York. Hackers allegedly broke into the computer systems of at least two credit card processing companies, stole prepaid debit card account numbers and programmed them with astronomical balances. Normally, prepaid debit cards are capped according to how much the customer paid for the card; the hackers essentially created infinite cards.

Map of Reyes’ alleged route withdrawing money from ATMs on February 19th. The numbers indicate the ATM cameras that allegedly captured him, in order. Source: US Attorney, Eastern District of New York

The account numbers were then emailed or texted to accomplices on the ground, who used a device called a “skimmer” to encode the account numbers onto the magnetic stripes of dummy cards. The groundlings then went on a withdrawal spree, hitting as many ATMs as they could in a matter of hours, while the hackers watched the transactions from behind remote screens, in real time. Between two tightly-coordinated heists, the shadowy criminal ring netted nearly $45 million in cash.

“The cyberattacks employed by the defendants and their co-conspirators in this case are known in the cyber underworld as ‘Unlimited Operations,’” the United States attorney for the Eastern District, which is prosecuting the case in New York, said in a statement. “These attacks rely upon both highly sophisticated hackers and organized criminal cells whose role is to withdraw the cash as quickly as possible.”

Unlimited Operations are marked by three key characteristics, the attorney’s office said.

Full story:

Cyber caper: behind the scenes of the $45 million global ATM heist | The Verge.

Jail Terms For Unlocking Cellphones Shows The True Black Heart Of The Copyright Monopoly

Jail Terms For Unlocking Cellphones Shows The True Black Heart Of The Copyright Monopoly | TorrentFreak.

http://torrentfreak.com

• Rick Falkvinge
• May 12, 2013

The discussion around people’s banished right to unlock their own cellphones has been framed as an unexpected and unanticipated effect of the copyright monopoly. To the contrary, it shows the heart of the monopoly’s philosophy: killing ownership as a concept.

There is a weak copyright monopoly reform bill happening in the United States Congress at the moment.

This bill is not about the copyright monopoly at all, and at the same time, about everything that the monopoly actually is. It is the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013.

The bill, which was presented to the U.S. Congress three days ago, makes it legal to unlock devices such as phones that you own, and do what you like with them. Let’s take that again, because it is jaw-dropping: the bill reforms the copyright monopoly to make it legal to tinker with objects that you own. It has nothing to do with BitTorrent, MKVs, streaming, or what we normally associate with the activity of sharing culture outside of the copyright monopoly distributions.

The bill is about your ability to take your phone to a different wireless operator. Your own phone, that you bought and paid for. Your legal ability to bring your own property wherever you like, without breaching criminal law and risking jail. How on Odin’s green Earth did this come to have to do with the copyright monopoly?

Few contemporary discussions put the spotlight like this one on how the copyright monopoly is not about rewarding artists, but is a political war on property – on our ability to own the things we paid for. (I won’t say “bought”, as that implies we actually own them.) The copyright monopoly is dividing the population into a corporate class who gets to control what objects may be used for what purpose, and a subservient consumer class that don’t get to buy or own anything – they just get to think they own things that can only be used in a predefined way, for a steep, monopolized, fixed price, or risk having the police sent after them.

This is not a free market. This is the opposite of a free market. The copyright monopoly stands in opposition to a free market, and in opposite to property as a concept.

Some people insist on deceptively calling the copyright monopoly “property”, which is categorical nonsense every bit of the way. Two people can’t both own an object in full; this is part of the very definition of property. Obviously, the idea that you could own the jacket you’re wearing while I could own its color is both asinine and nonsensical, just like the idea that you can own a CD but I can own the laser-etched pattern of grooves carved into it.

Yet, the copyright monopoly maximalists insist on calling their monopoly “property” in continued and deliberate deception. When you press them on how this goes counter to every known definition of property, they usually fall back to a stupid statement along the lines of “property is whatever we define it to be”, which avoids basic statements of fact on the nature of property, and goes to reveal the true intent – redefining property to something that creates two new classes in society: the corporate masters who own property, and the citizen serfs who get to use things they pay for in ways that are strictly defined and constrained.

To illustrate the absurdity of this, imagine a carpenter that had the legal right to send you to jail if you used his chairs in ways he disapproved of, after your having bought those chairs.

This is what the copyright monopoly was always about. The phone-unlocking issue is not an oddity or an outlier; it lies at the very heart of the monopoly’s philosophy. The copyright monopoly was always about control over other people’s property, and always about preventing creativity and innovation that could threaten the incumbents.

The copyright monopoly hurts creativity, hurts our economy, hurts our entrepreneurs – and most importantly, it is an affront to the most foundational concepts in society, such as the right to tinker with your own property. It needs to be questioned, dismantled, and abolished.

Canada: Montreal firm monitoring illegal downloading for court cases

Montreal firm monitoring illegal downloading for court cases – Canada – CBC News.

Providing service to American studio

The Canadian Press

 May 12, 2013

A Montreal-based firm has been monitoring Canadian users’ downloading of pirated content for several months and gathered more than one million different evidence files. (Darren Staples/Reuters)

Massive lawsuits targeting people who illegally download copyrighted content are common in the U.S., where people have been stuck with hefty fines and out-of-court settlement and now, there’s an attempt to bring that to Canada.

At the centre of the effort is Canipre, the only anti-piracy enforcement firm that provides forensic services to copyright-holders in Canada.

The Montreal-based firm has been monitoring Canadian users’ downloading of pirated content for several months. It has now gathered more than one million different evidence files, according to its managing director Barry Logan.

One of its clients is now before Federal Court in Toronto, requesting customer information for over 1,000 IP addresses — a user’s unique internet signature — collected by Canipre.

That client is the American studio Voltage Pictures, maker of hundreds of films including the Academy Award-winning Hurt Locker.

On the other side of the case is Teksavvy, an Ontario-based Internet provider. The IP addresses flagged by Canipre link back to its users.

The case is set to resume next month.

If the court orders Teksavvy to hand over customer info, it could be the beginning of a new chapter in the anti-piracy battle in Canada.

“We have a long list of clients waiting to go to court,” said Canipre’s Logan, who estimates that about 100 different companies are paying close attention to the case.

$5K limit on damages

These lawsuits have been common in the U.S. Between 200,000 and 250,000 people have been sued in the last two years, according to one Internet civil-liberties group.

“They send off threatening letters telling them, ‘If you don’t pay up we’re going to name you in this lawsuit and you could be on the hook for up to $150,000 in damages,”‘ said Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director of that group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Canadians don’t risk such severe damages, because of a bill passed last year that modified the federal Copyright Act.

In Canada, a cap of $5,000 on damages awarded for non-commercial copyright infringement was instituted recently. (Mark Harrison/Associated Press)

Bill C-11 imposed a limit of $5,000 on damages awarded for non-commercial copyright infringement, which applies to the average consumer who downloads films.

“The reason Parliament did that [is] they didn’t want the courts to be used in this way,” said David Fewer, director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.

The advocacy group is an intervenor in the Toronto case.

“Copyright is supposed to be a framework legislation. It’s not supposed to be used for building a compensation model.” He says the phenomenon of file-sharing suits is relatively new in Canada.

He said there has only been a single file-sharing lawsuit in Canada, launched by the music industry. The case, BMG Canada Inc. vs. John Doe, was launched in 2004, and it failed.

Fewer said no similar attempts have been made — until now.

“I’m a little bit surprised to see this [new] litigation popping up in Canada. We typically don’t have a culture in Canada for this kind of use of courts,” Fewer said.

For now, Canipre is the only Canadian firm providing this type of service. And it’s proud of the work it does.

“We understand the culture of piracy,” Logan said, adding that he has been involved in numerous IP-related litigation cases across Canada.“We’re bringing that model up here as a means to change social attitudes toward downloading,” said the Canipre executive. “Many people know it is illegal but they continue to do it.”

The company advertises its ability to conduct “aggressive takedown campaigns” for clients.

It monitors websites where pirated content is known to be available, and it searches for its clients’ content. When it finds violations, Canipre asks the hosting website to remove the content — a process known as a takedown request.

Educational message

“By aggressive, what we’re saying is, ‘We don’t do one or two takedown [requests], we do 1,000 to 2,000 at a time,”‘ said Logan, who lives in Ontario.”We’ve managed to put a business process in place with a lot of the top-tier platforms that provide pirated content.”

But his company services don’t just include suing people. He says there’s an educational message, too.

‘Our collective goal is not to sue everybody… but to change the sense of entitlement that people have, regarding Internet-based theft of property.’—Barry Logan, Canipre

“Our collective goal is not to sue everybody… but to change the sense of entitlement that people have, regarding Internet-based theft of property.”

“File Saturation” is one example of an educational message.

The firm uploads a harmless file to sharing websites which closely resembles the content users are seeking. There is one key difference: This particular file is completely useless.

The goal of that effort? Make it harder and more time-consuming to download illegally.

Logan expects Federal Court to order the Internet provider, Teksavvy, to hand over customer information.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, Logan will keep fighting against piracy.

“Litigation is not the only tool that will change piracy — it’s simply a tool.”

Logan wants piracy to become a taboo, much like drinking-and-driving is now.

“That’s [not] the attitude here in Canada: It’s a pervasive sense of entitlement,” he said. “[Illegally] downloading content should also be socially unacceptable.”

For now, piracy remains strong in Canada: there were more than 370,000 Bit Torrent transactions over a month — a transaction being each time a user opens a session to download a film — according to statistics gathered by Canipre for its clients.

Those statistics only include Canipre’s clients, so the actual Canadian number is far higher.

Read 133 comments133

Read about how Canada’s copyright law has changed

How copyright changes affect Canadian users of content

INTERACTIVE: Reforming copyright law

Copyright changes: how they’ll affect users of digital content

TekSavvy movie downloading case adjourned to 2013

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10 Countries That Commit The Most Cyber-Attacks – 2 min video

10 Countries That Commit The Most Cyber-Attacks – YouTube.

US military secrets leaked to Chinese hackers for three years

US military secrets leaked to Chinese hackers for three years — RT USA.

RT USA

May 03, 2013 

AFP Photo / Lui Jin

A US military contractor was allegedly hacked by those associated with the Chinese military. The company reportedly ignored signs of security breaches, allowing hackers to access military technology and classified documents for three years.

QinetiQ North America was attacked by a Shanghai-based hacker group from 2007 to 2010, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The hacking collective has been coined the “Comment Crew” by security experts.

The company is known for its contributions to national security – including software used by US forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Comment Crew’s continuous spying reportedly provided China with a wealth of secret information on QinetiQ’s drones, satellites, military robotics, and the US Army’s combat helicopter fleet. The spies also stole several terabytes – equivalent to hundreds of millions of pages – of documents and data on weapons programs.

China’s military may have also stolen programming code and design details that it could use to disable some of the most sophisticated US weaponry. The situation could have a crippling effect on America’s defense capabilities.

“God forbid we get into a conflict with China but if we did we could face a major embarrassment, where we try out all these sophisticated weapons systems and they don’t work,” said Richard Clarke, former special adviser to President George W. Bush on cyber security.

But the hacking could have been easily prevented, if QinetiQ would have picked up on one of the many warnings it received along the way.

Failing to connect the dots

QinetiQ ignored the first sign of spying in 2007, when an agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service notified the company that two people were apparently losing classified information on their laptops.

QinetiQ failed to act with caution, according to Brian Dykstra, a forensics expert hired to conduct the investigation into the lost data.

“They just felt like it was this limited little thing, like they’d picked up some virus,” he said.

Dykstra was given only four days to complete the investigation. He said the company didn’t give him the time or data necessary to determine whether more employees had been successfully targeted. In his report, Dykstra warned that QinetiQ is “likely not seeing the full extent” of the intrusion.

His assumptions were soon proved correct. In 2008, NASA alerted the company that hackers had tried to enter its system from one of QinetiQ’s computers.

But QinetiQ still failed to connect the dots, treating each series of attacks over the next several months as unrelated incidents. The company’s ignorance was welcomed by Comment Crew, who continued to raid servers and gather more than 13,000 internal passwords in the first 2 ½ years.

An easy hack?

In 2010, the hackers logged onto QinetiQ’s system with incredible ease – through the company’s remote access system, just like an ordinary employee.

The hack was made easy because of QinetiQ’s failure to use a two-factor authentication, allowing Comment Crew to use the stolen password of a network administrator. But it gets even worse – the company had discovered its own vulnerability months before, but failed to fix it the problem.

Over the course of four days, the hackers attacked at least 14 servers, eventually hitting the jackpot when they discovered an inventory of weapons-systems technology and source code throughout the company.

When QinetiQ finally caught on in 2010 and hired two outside firms to help combat the hackers. It was soon revealed that Comment Crew had established near permanent residence in the company’s computers.

The firms also discovered that the hackers had walked away with information on microchips that control the company’s robots.

The chip architecture could help China test ways to take over or defeat US robots or aerial drones, said Noel Sharkey, a drones and robotics expert at Britain’s Sheffield University.

The hackers also targeted at least 17 employees working on the Condition Based Maintenance program, which collects data on Apache and Blackhawk helicopters deployed around the world.

Thus far, there has been no word from the State Department regarding Comment Crew’s hacks into QinetiQ systems. Washington has the power to revoke the company’s charter to handle military technology if it finds negligence.

However, it appears the US government is doing just the opposite. In May 2012, QinetiQ received a $4.7 million cybersecurity contract from the US Transportation Department.

Honor among (credit card) thieves?

Honor among (credit card) thieves?.

http://www.sciencedaily.com

Apr. 22, 2013

— A Michigan State University criminologist dug into the seamy underbelly of online credit card theft and uncovered a surprisingly sophisticated network of crooks that is unique in the cybercrime domain.

The thieves, Thomas Holt found, run an online marketplace for stolen credit data similar to eBay or Amazon where reputations drive sales. Thieves sell data and money laundering services, advertised via web forums, and send and receive payments electronically or through an intermediary. They even provide feedback on transactions to help weed out sellers who cannot be trusted to deliver the illegal goods.

Holt’s study, funded by the National Institute of Justice, is published in the research journal Global Crime.

“These aren’t just 15-year-olds stealing credit card info online and using it to buy pornography,” said Holt, associate professor of criminal justice. “These are thieves who come to trust one another. There’s a layer of sophistication here that can’t be understated, that’s very different than what we think about with other forms of crime.”

First, credit card information is stolen from an individual or group. Tactics can include hacking into the database of a bank, retailer or other service provider; sending emails to consumers masquerading as a bank to acquire sensitive details such as usernames and passwords (called phishing); and skimming. Examples of skimming include attaching a hard-to-spot device on an ATM machine or a crooked waiter who wears an electronic belt that can capture a card’s details.

The thief then advertises his haul in an online forum, with details such as card type, country of origin and asking price. Holt said a Visa Classic card, for example, might go for $5 to $20 per card, with a price discount for buying large amounts of data.

The winning buyer finalizes the deal online and sends the money through an electronic payment service. If the seller isn’t known or trusted, a middleman, called a guarantor, is used to assure the data is good before payment is sent — minus a fee.

For the buyers, there is any number of illicit service providers to then help them make purchases in a way that doesn’t raise suspicion or to pull money directly from the accounts — minus a fee.

All of this is done in a rather democratic fashion — unlike, say, the hierarchical structure of the mafia, said Holt, who monitored two English-language and two Russian-language forums for the study.

Some policymakers have called for flooding the online forums with bogus comments in an attempt to build mistrust and bring them down. But Holt said this strategy won’t necessarily work for organized forums with managers who can monitor and remove comments as in the forums he sampled.

A better strategy, he said, might be for law enforcement authorities to infiltrate the sophisticated networks with a long-term undercover operation. It’s a challenge, but one that might be more effective than other strategies called for by researchers.

Hijacker Tears Large BitTorrent Site Apart, Succeeds Where U.S. Authorities Failed | Admin Hacks Own Site

Hijacker Tears Large BitTorrent Site Apart, Succeeds Where U.S. Authorities Failed | TorrentFreak.

TorrentFreak

Andy

April 18, 2013

Despite regular complaints from rightsholders and direct pressure from the United States Trade Representative, little has been done to shut down or even damage Bulgaria’s Zamunda BitTorrent tracker. This so-called “Notorious pirate market” has continued against the odds but during the last few days a carefully planned operation has torn the site apart.

When the United States Trade Representative (USTR) compiles the annual ‘Notorious Pirate Markets’ list there are always a core of BitTorrent sites included.

The Pirate Bay, KickAssTorrents and isoHunt make their usual appearances but among them are always Zamunda and ArenaBG, two Bulgarian torrent trackers that are not only their country’s biggest, but also some of the most significant in the entire region.

Numerous actions have taken against both sites up to and including criminal investigations but none have succeeded in causing any real damage to either the trackers or their popularity. Today, however, Zamunda is sailing through unchartered waters and facing a catastrophic setback engineered not by local or U.S. authorities, but by a trusted member of staff.

Late Saturday night / Sunday morning, secret changes were taking place at Zamunda. A former site admin, coder and web designer who still helped out on the site decided that he would seize control. In what insiders told TorrentFreak was a carefully planned and executed operation, the site’s domain (zamunda.net) was taken over and redirected to a previously prepared set of servers.

As soon as the redirect had taken place the real Zamunda database was deleted along with several historical backups with the intention that the site could never return under its original owners.

With the majority of users oblivious to the switch the ‘new’ Zamunda – operating on the old domain of course – continued as if nothing had happened. However, things didn’t go to plan. The hijacker failed to anticipate how much server power would be required to run the site resulting in an announcement that unexpected loading issues were being experienced. There were also announcements relating to a possible hack attack, none of which made any real sense.

With all the upheaval it’s no surprise what came next. Former admins and moderators were all banned from the hijacked site along with anyone who tried to discuss the problems in the site’s forums. Mail between site members was deleted and any opposition was quashed.

However, while the hijacker had succeeded in taking over the site and deleting some backups, he hadn’t managed to delete them all. A “90% working” copy of Zamunda had been missed and within a day it had been put back online under two previously prepared backup domains – Zamunda.se and Zelka.org. But even after the setup of the new site there were further problems.

“I can confirm that the [former admin] managed a limited hack on zamunda.se deleting 10,000 torrents which will be restored from backup data,” a source close to the site told TorrentFreak.

So with two sites online it’s now a question of which will survive. Zamunda.net has the advantage of operating under the traditional URL with a full database. What it doesn’t have is the support of the site’s former staff and according to our sources it is also missing a torrent site’s most valuable commodity. Content uploaders are vital if a site is to remain popular and reports suggest they are fleeing the ship.

“The upload rate has decreased by at least 90% by rough calculations. For two days 40 torrents have been uploaded compared to roughly 10 to 15 times more the week before,” we were informed.

“However, there are still a lot of peers, seeders and leechers,” a second source added. “But that site is a lost cause now, no one supports it, and only the users are losing from this battle. The new tracker [Zamunda.se] is growing fast but it needs to grow from the beginning.”

The big question now is why the former admin took the decision to take over the site. After an initial period of smoke and mirrors he now claims he did it for the users, to protect them from admins that had become too greedy and powerful through their totalitarian regime.

“After an internal coup, these wicked people were removed from the management of the site and the whole system no longer belongs to them. We can not allow the freedom of the P2P community to be used for populist political purposes,” the hijacker said in a statement.

One of our sources agreed that rule on the site was indeed tight but added that to control so many users it was probably a necessary evil. Nevertheless, the motivation for the takeover and whether it was sincere or not has now become a side issue.

“In my opinion the takeover was a big mistake,” a source told TorrentFreak. “Since there’s no support it’ll be hard for this ‘fake’ site to survive, and it’ll take years for the new tracker [and old community] to get back on their feet and once again become one of the most popular Bulgarian sites with one of the biggest communities.”

Only time will tell if that will come to pass but it’s interesting to consider that one man has been able to achieve what the combined resources of Hollywood, the record industry and two governments could not. Although nothing has worked up to now, maybe that thought will prompt the site’s return to its rightful owners.

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WordPress website targeted by hackers

BBC News – WordPress website targeted by hackers.

BBC News –

15 April 2013

The botnet targets WordPress users with the username “admin”, trying thousands of possible passwords.

The attack began a week after WordPress beefed up its security with an optional two-step authentication log-in option.

The site currently powers 64m websites read by 371m people each month.

According to survey website W3Techs, around 17% of the world’s websites are powered by WordPress.

“Here’s what I would recommend: If you still use ‘admin’ as a username on your blog, change it, use a strong password,” wrote WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg on his blog.

Hi-tech crime terms

• Bot – one of the individual computers in a botnet; bots are also called drones or zombies
• Botnet – a network of hijacked home computers, typically controlled by a criminal gang
• Malware – an abbreviation for malicious software ie a virus, trojan or worm that infects a PC
• DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) – an attack that knocks out a computer by overwhelming it with data; thousands of PCs can take part, hence the “distributed”
• Drive-by download – a virus or trojan that starts to install as soon as a user visits a particular website
• IP address – the numerical identifier every machine connected to the net needs to ensure data goes to the right place

He also advised adopting two-step authentication, which involves a personalised “secret number” allocated to users in addition to a username and password, and ensuring that the latest version of WordPress is installed.

“Most other advice isn’t great – supposedly this botnet has more than 90,000 IP addresses, so an IP-limiting or login-throttling plugin isn’t going to be great (they could try from a different IP [address] a second for 24 hours),” Mr Mullenweg added.

Matthew Prince, Chief Executive and co-founder of Cloudflare, said that the aim of the attack may have been to build a stronger botnet.

“One of the concerns of an attack like this is that the attacker is using a relatively weak botnet of home PCs in order to build a much larger botnet of beefy servers in preparation for a future attack,” he wrote in a blog post.

“These larger machines can cause much more damage in DDoS [Distributed Denial of Service] attacks because the servers have large network connections and are capable of generating significant amounts of traffic,” he added.

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Bloggers Beware: Huge attack on WordPress sites

Huge attack on WordPress sites could spawn never-before-seen super botnet | Ars Technica.

With so much at stake, readers who run WordPress sites are strongly advised to lock down their servers immediately. The effort may not only protect the security of the individual site. It could help safeguard the Internet as a whole.

http://arstechnica.com

Ongoing attack from >90,000 computers is creating a strain on Web hosts, too.

CloudFlare

Security analysts have detected an ongoing attack that uses a huge number of computers from across the Internet to commandeer servers that run the WordPress blogging application.

The unknown people behind the highly distributed attack are using more than 90,000 IP addresses to brute-force crack administrative credentials of vulnerable WordPress systems, researchers from at least three Web hosting services reported. At least one company warned that the attackers may be in the process of building a “botnet” of infected computers that’s vastly stronger and more destructive than those available today. That’s because the servers have bandwidth connections that are typically tens, hundreds, or even thousands of times faster than botnets made of infected machines in homes and small businesses.

“These larger machines can cause much more damage in DDoS [distributed denial-of-service] attacks because the servers have large network connections and are capable of generating significant amounts of traffic,” Matthew Prince, CEO of content delivery network CloudFlare, wrote in a blog post describing the attacks.

Full story—>>>

Huge attack on WordPress sites could spawn never-before-seen super botnet | Ars Technica.

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Major Bitcoin exchanges hit with cyberattacks

Major Bitcoin exchanges hit with cyberattacks – Apr. 4, 2013.

By James O’Toole

@CNNMoneyTech

April 4, 2013

Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin exchange, said it had been hit with a massive cyberattack.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

As interest has surged in Bitcoin, platforms that support the digital currency have been hit by damaging cyberattacks this week.

Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange that claims to handle more than 70% of all Bitcoin trades, said in a statement on Thursday that it had been hit by a massive Distributed Denial of Service attack. In a DDoS attack, hackers direct a giant traffic surge to their target, overwhelming the site’s servers and making it hard for legitimate users to gain access.

The attacks appear to have shaken confidence among some Bitcoin users.

On Wednesday, Bitcoins rose to $147, before pulling back overnight to around $115 as word of the cyberattacks spread. Mt. Gox said the attacks may be an effort to prompt “panic selling”, with the hackers hoping to buy up cheap Bitcoins following the panic they’ve created — and then waiting for the currency to rise again. They may also be aimed more generally at destabilizing the Bitcoin system.

“[R]emember that Bitcoin, despite being designed to have its value increase over time, will always be the victim of people trying to abuse the system, or even the value of Bitcoin decreasing occasionally,” the exchange said.

Related: Bitcoin ATMs coming soon

Mt. Gox said it was suffering its “worst trading lag ever,” with some users having difficulty logging into their accounts. The company said it was working to make sure the problem didn’t become any more serious.

The exchange did not say whether any individual accounts had been compromised — a common practice among hackers who launch DDoS attacks — and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Full story—>>>

Major Bitcoin exchanges hit with cyberattacks – Apr. 4, 2013.

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