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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."
Scamcoins arent worth anything anymore....
As an owner of a Mac Mini let me just say, "Thank God, I'm safe!".
I use MACs because they just work!
--A virus writer.
A Mac Trojan and a Bitcoin story in one! Quick someone tie this into global warming!
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
With the rapid falloff of interest in Bitcoin someone must have gotten really bored to invest the time to create this trojan. I think they would have been better off creating a 419 scam claiming they need help to liquidate Bitcoin assets without sinking the market.
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.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
Ha ha ha ha, I get it.
that leverages the processing power of video cards to generate Bitcoins, a popular type of virtual currency.
At that rate, summary might as well have said:
"A newly identified Mac OS X (a popular Mac operating system) Trojan (a popular method for exploits) bundles a component that leverages the processing power (a measure of processing) of video cards to generate Bitcoins, a popular type of virtual currency (something used for economic exchange (the process of trading one thing for another (something other than the one thing))). The new Trojan was dubbed DevilRobber by antivirus vendors (companies that write viruses) and is being distributed together with several software applications via BitTorrent sites, places to download torrents (links that track the locations of pieces of a file (a collection of bits (binary representations of data, ie information)))"
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Hahahahahahahahahaha "popular". Bitcoins. "Popular". hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
You have called a plumber. Plumber came in with some guy. Some guy bringed his golden tin, went to your kitchen, took your hammer from your instrument stand and started to mint fake coins. Ow!
Eh, you geeks may scoff but some of us are pulling in 20-30% profits *PER DAY* trading these "silly" Bitcoins.
It really is the ultimate geek fantasy project: a completely open ended, sky-is-the-limit, world political structure changing, disruptive open source software technology.
Anyone that hates without backing it up is just trying to feed you disinformation. Bitcoin directly challenges TPTB because it puts trading power back in the hands of the people.
I would like to see you try to connect to an Ethernet network without a MAC. Yes, they "just work", but they are also requisite.
One lame troll deserves another, eh?
So it pulls money from thin air?
How is this any different from when the Federal Reserve bailed out AIG (who had to pay out on a lot of CDS betting slips and didn't have enough money to pay out on them) by creating money to bail them out from thin air? Those betting slips aren't worth anything they're negative value, but Federal reserve pays creates positive money for them.
How is it any different from some trojan creating Bitcoins from nothing? How is it any diferent from the UK and US Quantitative Easing programs?
If you created that money and handed it to Goldman Sachs would that be any different that creating the money and handing it to some hacker? In what way?
While I admire the idealism of the BitCoin project, I have to remember a couple of essential functions provided by (evil!) Government control of "fiat" currency!
1) ANY "fiat" currency is intended first and foremost to "promote commerce" and the first need of any actual business that uses the currency is STABILITY. NO (evil!!) government would ever have allowed the "run up" and "crash" of BitCoins that we have seen over the past few months.
2) Governments chase/catch/punish crooks and swindlers - probably that is what they do the very best! Now that BitCoin actually has (had?) "significant" value it inevitably attracts "significant" crooks! But BirCoin HAS NO (EVIL!!!!) Government to catch the crooks!
One wonders at the sophistication of the crooks (e.g. Madoff) if BitCoins had risen to US$300/coin ($3K/30K or ???).
When I was a kid I wanted to buy a machine that could make money, so I could buy even more such machines, and get a spill over effect on me, and go to the candy store
"together with several software applications" the article only says 1, possibly other apps. Bah! Stupid people not being careful deserve to get a trojan.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
... at least to some extent; this is further evidence. It must feel pretty bad for some that crooks understand bitcoin so much better than the blindfolded "bitcoin is a ponzi scheme" haters. Then of course bitcoin has its problems, but it is so seldom that bitcoin critic posts make informed points.
The only thing "backing" dollars is the fact that people accept them - that's it. Nobody forces you to accept them, not even the government. Bartering is perfectly legal in this country - you have choice. So when you say "backing", you're practicing an anachronism, a turn of phrase used by "gold standard" nuts. As in, dollars are "backed" by gold. Meaning you can exchange your dollars for gold, something that hasn't been true since the 30s. Bitcoins are just as valid as dollars, as long as their marketing plan was as good as the United State's government's. Lately their marketing has sucked, mainly because of the the MtGox break-in. And because the establishment has invested in dollars - not bitcoins. So the media as an extension of the establishment has come out against Bitcoins for the most part. All of which are irrelevant to me, as long as other people accept Bitcoins for services and money. What you think doesn't matter.
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.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
"Having your fiat currency devalued to cover the deficit spending of long retired spendthrift politicans is not voluntary."
And neither is this voluntary, it's a violation of Bitcoin rules. In the federal reserve creating money and buying negative value junk, that's illegal too, they legally cannot accept the junk AIG gave them for the money.
It's the same thing, Bitcoin would be a new currency that cannot continue because thieves simply magic it from thin air, and likewise if they continue with QE, US$ cannot continue because thieves in Wallstreet have been treated like banks and are simply magic'ing massive amounts of new money into circulation.
I know which one I'd like to see prosecuted the most.
There are roughly 7 million bitcoins in circulation, and they are trading at about $3. If Bitcoin was a company, its market capitalisation would be $21 Million. That's not really very much money for a project with this much hype. Nobody will ever buy a luxury yacht or a private jet with bitcoins, because even if they owned every coin in circulation they still could not pay for it.
Should this be called "digital slave labor"?
The point of a trojan is that it's hiding and doing its stuff undercover. Using a VGA all the time is pretty easy to notice.
Is that this is a very obscure art project, executed by a master programmer. Seriously, parallel processing? On the OSX architecture? With a virus? Using the GPGPU? For Bitcoins? The algorithmic complexity is enormous.
Does it use OpenCL to harness the GPU power?
I've been researching malware for the last 5 years, and I have to say that modern malware is typically a lot less advanced than it could be. Apart from interesting once-in-a-while malware that gets large media attention (but even then which does not go the whole hog and implement more useful features), malware authors seem to be moving into other areas. Hey, maybe most of them are developing ethical,free software now!
This program is a waste of resources, regardless of whether bitcoin is a viable currency or not, no-one should be using computer time in an unauthorized or unannounced fashion for their own benefit. It's just rude. I would agree with 'malware' which contributed to Folding@Home or one of these useful projects for the good of mankind as long as it announced its presence and asked for authorization first.(which is still in a gray area I think)
Bitcoin mining really only benefits one person and shouldn't be done in this manner at all.
You sent this cold shiver running up and down my spine. Then I realized you weren't talking about the American Stock Market. Thank god!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Bitcoin has some intrinsic value -- but unfortunately, most of this value has the most impact on those doing illegal or unethical things. The ability to control and move them across the globe, nearly instantaneously, with no restrictions or fees, and without the ability of any government/bank to stop/freeze it, has produced quite a market for it (and it can be anonymous if you know what you're doing). You say it has no value, but what about Wikileaks who have had 95% of their assets and income cut off by governments and banks freezing their money. They'd still be 100% functional if they were dealing in BTC. And of course, the drug trade benefits too. These aren't the most "ethical" reasons for it to have value, but they don't have to be good reasons to impart actual value. The fact is, there are people who want BTC, and as long as there's a scarce amount of it, it's going to acquire value in the minds of some. (BTW, I have no interest in these unethical properties, I'm all for BTC because of the fact I have control over it, and don't have to pay anyone or give out any information to use it).
To those arguing about bubbles -- I'm interested to see how this exactly looks like a bubble. Bubbles burst, BTC didn't. The fact is there's still lots of people involved in BTC, there just happens to be more people selling than buying, which is why the prices has declined slowly over months... it didn't just collapse in a week like most bubbles.
Personally, I'm happy to see all the speculators get out of BTC, and hopefully it can maintain some degree of stability now without all the gambling. Unfortunately, botnets and Trojans like this are probably the biggest reason for the price decline, as their constant sell-off causes negative pressure on the prices. But what is interesting is that so far no one has actually succeeded at attacking the protocol itself. Sure, individual websites/exchanges get attacked, but the protocol itself remains secure. I think it's worth something that the botnet owners have decided to play by the rules of BTC... because if they could break the system to make a quick buck, they would. But so far there has been $20,000,000+ worth of value in the BTC for many months, which is plenty incentive for every unethical person in the world to break it--yet no one has.
I'm not convinced that Bitcoin 1.0 (right now) will survive the test of time. It's security is great, but it's name has been soiled, and some lessons learned really need to be applied, but cannot be once the beast is set in motion. I wouldn't be surprised if it stuck around for a while, but even if it doesn't, something else will replace it. There's too much value in "freedom-enhancing" currencies, and there's no doubt that Bitcoin has been a proof-of-concept for it that it works.
P.S. - Bitcoin really shouldn't be referred to as a "currency." It's more like a commodity, similar to gold, since there is a finite amount of it in the world. If BTC is going to survive the legal battles, it would be best for its supporters to not fight for it as a currency, as that can open it up to all kinds of legal attacks.
Before the Windows fanbois get here - one must download some pirated software and install it to get the Trojan that... does... nothing in particular since it does something with bitcoins. It probably also hacks your Google+ account, but let's be honest: no one cares.
Also, ftfa - "[DevilRobber] also spies on you by taking screen captures and stealing your usernames and passwords"... right, because all those passwords are plaintext on screen, amirite? Just a software vendor trying to scare mac users into buying their useless software; more at 11.
If I were Lemkesoft (publisher of Graphic Converter), I would be really happy about this. What better way to get more people to buy legitimate copies of your program then by scaring them with examples of how stealing the program leads to malware. Maybe software publishers should think about doing this on purpose. If they flooded the torrent world with malware-infected versions of their software then it might scare some users straight.
Bitcoin is fantastic, but the way it is distributed is not.
Aggregating bitcoin to the most efficient "farmer" is like bringing a currency into existence by throwing out handfuls of it to a wild mob at varying times of the day. This is why the coin still has very little value as relates to real world goods or services and why it is plagued by these get-rich-quick ponzi schemes.
If a government entity could somehow be convinced to create bitcoin at a defined rate to pay for public services while also accepting it as a payment for taxes then the currency would have legitimacy and would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
A Trojan is a condom.
These things are Trojan Horses - you know, the friendly-looking gift that gains access by earning your trust through false pretenses?
Did anyone else kinda do a double-take when they read the "a popular type of virtual currency" part?
Sorry, when I think bitcoin, the word 'popular' is about the last adjective to come to mind.
If you use an OS without security, this is what happens.
Security through obscurity isn't security.
What's the likelihood of people knowing about this trojan before it hit the news? What's the likelihood of them knowing about it and then cashing out their BitCoins, causing the crash in their value that we saw not so long ago?
Insider trading, indeed...
According to Intego, this malware is fairly sophisticated in its actions, but it is not very widespread. http://blog.intego.com/new-malware-devilrobber-grabs-files-and-bitcoins-performs-bitcoin-mining-and-more/ For now, security researchers have only seen DevilRobber in a handful of Mac applications distributed via BitTorrent trackers. So as long as you avoid downloading software from untrusted sites, you should be OK.