Slashdot Mirror
TV News 'Hack' Sees Bitcoins Swiped (bbc.com)
Two French hackers used their computer skills to reconstruct a blurred-out code on TV and claim bitcoins worth $1,000. From a report: Michel Sassano and Clement Storck had seen an interview with entrepreneur Roger Ver on French television. Mr Ver had offered $1,000 to viewers - but a QR code needed to claim the money had been blurred out. The duo analysed a small part of the code that was visible, however, and managed to access the funds. When the France 2 channel broadcast its interview with Mr Ver earlier this month, he promised the money -- just over three bitcoin cash coins, worth $1,000 -- to whichever viewer was quickest to scan an on-screen QR code. However, the code had been blurred out by France 2 -- Mr Sassano believes this is because of French broadcasting regulations that prevent news programmes from giving away prizes. "The process to decode the private key from the moment we watched the show to when we entered it in the wallet took, I think, between 12 and 16 hours," Mr Sassano told the BBC.
So, the people on the show offered a small prize to whomever scanned the code first. Somebody did, and gained the prize. How is this news?
Claimed and Swiped are two different things. Dude was offering the bitcoin. Broadcaster prevented that. Viewers found way to still enter their claim.
the title is pretty misleading. And this is pretty far from a hack, as the QR code was specifically intended to be scanned. Bigger surprise is that no one at the tv station did this first.
bitcoins
worth $1,000
I think the plural is misleading. That's less than 20% of one bitcoin at the time of this comment.
The TV channel made it a bit more difficult than usual.
Where is the swipe/theft/swindle in this case?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
now how legal was that? and can hacking changers be filed?
In the usa that may of been an computer fraud and abuse act issue + an tax reporting issue as well.
It must be pretty dated if bitcoins were at $300
Are we going to stop blurring faces and documents on camera and switch to using black bars?
Or, really, any completely opaque symbol would suffice.
An opaque overlay is computationally cheaper than blurring too. Not that should be an issue anymore anyway.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
i heard that will be a second split or something like that . http://www.aqweeb.com/2017/03/...
First of all, this story does not involve bitcoin in any way. It involves bitcoin cash, which is not the same coin.
Second, the headline tries to imply that the coins in question were stolen, when they were not. The owner intended to give them away.
Shitty slashdot reporting as always.
Thanksgiving quots
You are referring to hacking as if it is a bad thing. Learn the true definition of hacking from Richard Stallman.
The word that you are looking for is cracking. A safe cracker breaks into the bank vault. Unfortunately, the news media uses the wrong definition.
The people who won this contest did not crack, they hacked. No laws were broken and no money was stolen. The bitcoin was intended to be given away.
Congrats to msmash for getting the definition right. If we could only get copyright infringement and piracy used correctly.