New Ransomware Strain is Locking Up Bitcoin Mining Rigs in China (zdnet.com)

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.

Comments

How do they want to be paid?

[mark_reh]

Bitcoin or real money?

Re:How do they want to be paid?

[Fwipp]

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?

Re:How do they want to be paid?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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 barter of X for Y can be split (without substantial loss) into two barters - X for $ and $ for Y - , so you don't have to find somebody with a Y who wants to swap it for your X.

And you still missed that real money isn't real. There is 0 intrinsic value. It's all made up, just like digital coins.

That depends on the kind of money. Some of it is a commodity that has a generally recognized value. For instance, non-debased coinage: Standard sized chunks of known purity metals, stamped to indicate its composition and who certified it. Or debased coinage: Ditto but then the manufacturing-and-certifying authority changes the composition to be less valuable but keeps the designation.

Then there is "backed paper money" - lightweight printed promises to give you something else of value (though less convenient to handle) when you ask. (The value of these is a function of the trader's estimate of the value of the backing commodity and the likelyhood that the promiser will make good on the promise.) The commodity might be anyhing: Gold, Silver, Liquor, pork bellies, ...

But you seem to be talking about fiat currency: Paper notes or cheap token coins plus a law that says they must be accepted for payment of debts. The "backing value", to the extent there is one, is the promise of the government accepting these things (for fines, taxes, etc) and using force and/or court non-enforcement of debt collection on private creditors and merchants unless they accept the currency. The perceived value is also modulated by the estimate of how much more the government will print/stamp out, diluting the value of what is already out there.

Fan Control

[nuckfuts]

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.

Re:Cue the old crowd complaining...

[Anonymous Coward]

Prepare to be amused

https://tulipcoins.github.io

Been a thing for a while!

Re:If you can't beat 'em, pwn 'em?

[mysidia]

Or the attack launched by some evildoer who is also a a Bitcoin Cash or other AltCoin proponent.