Day: September 1, 2017

Moscow Exchange has clarified its cryptocurrency trading plans. This follows “some incorrect reporting that said that Moscow Exchange does not plan to launch bitcoin trading,” according to a representative of the exchange.

Also read: Moscow Stock Exchange Prepares to Trade Cryptocurrency

Moscow Exchange’s Clarification

Moscow Exchange, the largest exchange group in Russia, has clarified its plans to launch bitcoin trading. Andrey Braginskiy, the exchange’s managing director of Communications, sent an email to an undisclosed number of news outlets on Friday stating that:

I wanted to clarify Moscow Exchange’s position on the issue of trading crypto assets and related products. There was some incorrect reporting that said that Moscow Exchange does not plan to launch bitcoin trading. This isn’t right.

The exchange’s clarification came one day after an article was published with the headline “Moscow Exchange: No Plans to Launch Bitcoin Trading.”

“On the contrary, this is a very new, and very exciting area and we are looking at it extremely closely,” Braginskiy continued. “While it is too early to confirm specific plans today, we are considering all options.”

Following the exchange’s email, the publication promptly modified the content of its article as well as changed the headline to “No, Moscow Exchange Hasn’t Launched Bitcoin or Crypto Trading – Yet.”

Cryptocurrency Derivatives Could Be First

Braginskiy explained that the exchange is preparing to support the trading of any financial products with sufficient demand as well as the corresponding legal framework and investor protections. “This could certainly include cryptocurrencies themselves, as well as cryptocurrency derivatives, cryptocurrency ETFs, etc.,” he wrote, which confirmed news.Bitcoin.com’s reporting on Tuesday.

In addition, he revealed:

From both regulatory and technical standpoints, potentially it could be faster and easier to start with trading in cryptocurrency derivatives.

While there is not yet a definite plan, the exchange is “already working on creating the infrastructure to support such trading,” Braginskiy elaborated. “Specifically, National Settlement Depository, which is part of Moscow Exchange Group, is looking to develop a platform to securely host and store crypto assets and settle transactions.”

Regulatory Framework Needed

For Moscow Exchange to launch cryptocurrency trading, a regulatory framework is needed, according to Braginskiy. Earlier this week, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev proposed treating bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as financial assets, to be listed on stock exchanges and restricted to only qualified investors.

While citing that the regulatory issue is still being discussed among relevant government bodies, Braginskiy said “but as you will have seen, this is an issue that is being discussed very actively, and discussions are moving quickly,” adding that:

The Russian State Duma has confirmed that it will be discussing legislative aspects of cryptocurrencies and trading during the parliamentary session this autumn.

What do you think of Moscow Exchange’s plans for bitcoin trading? Let us know in the comments section below.

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The post Moscow Exchange Clarifies Bitcoin Trading Plans After Conflicting Reports appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin miners are always a target to criminals and other assailants. Around 3,000 Bitcoin miners were exposed to a potential Telnet-based attack. All of these miners seemingly use the same mining pool to generate Bitcoin and they may very well belong to the same organization. It is unclear who owns the device exactly, but they seemingly all use a Chinese IP address. Thankfully, the miners were taken offline shortly afterward to resolve this issue.

Telnet Attack can Disrupt Bitcoin Mining

It is quite disconcerting to learn how a Telnet-based attack could have caused major problems for nearly 3,0000 Bitcoin miners. 2,893 Bitcoin miners were exposed to open Telnet ports which required no credentials to connect to remotely. It is unclear who owns these devices in question, although it appears a Chinese miner – or mining firm – is the most likely owner. A security researcher discovered how all of these affected machines have a Chinese IP address. 

Thankfully, the person or group running these nearly 3,00 miners took the necessary steps to take the machines offline. If a person were to access these Bitcoin mining machines remotely, it is unclear how much damage they could do. It is not unlikely an assailant could severely disrupt the mining operation in question. With Telnet access removed from these devices, the exploit has been addressed even though it does highlight a major attack vector.

The swift course of action by the owner of these machines indicates they are making a lot of money from their mining efforts. It is certainly possible all of these miners are pointed to the Litecoin network, considering the machines seemingly refer to “Thunder” hardware. That would identify the hardware as ZeusMiner’s Thunder X3 miners, which are used to generate Litecoin income over time. The firmware located on the identified devices seems to confirm as much. These machines combined can generate around $1 million in income every single day.

Someone tried to take advantage of this Telnet access prior to this researcher’s discovery. The researcher noted how there were attempts to install a backdoor or different types of malware on these machines, although it is doubtful they were successful in this regard. Then again, some remnants were discovered on the machines, indicating this Telnet connectivity has been left unchecked for quite some time. Telnet access has been a favorite tool among criminals lately.

Taking advantage of exposed devices like these can have dire consequences. First and foremost, the mining operator could lose a significant amount of income if an assailant were to successfully control these devices.  Secondly, it goes to show this could very well be part of a larger IoT-based attack to cause DDoS attacks or other types of nefarious activity. The same researcher recently secured thousands of IoT devices which used standard Telnet credentials.

Bitcoin mining hardware can be a powerful tool when it is controlled by the wrong individuals. Every ASIC miner is quite powerful in its own right, and if an assailant controls thousands of these devices, they have a lot of computing power at their disposal. While the ulterior motives remain subject to speculation, for the time being, it is good to see the operator successfully protect these machines from further harm. 

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Things just keep getting more interesting in the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The Parity Bitcoin client, which has been around since April of 2017, recently received a major upgrade. It is now compatible with not just SegWit, but also Bitcoin Cash and even SegWit2x, assuming that latter one will still be a thing come November 2017. This is a major development for people relying on this full-node implementation of the Bitcoin protocol.

Supporting Forks Through Bitcoin Full-node Implementations

Very few developers ever assumed we would see two competing Bitcoin blockchains. That is the situation we are in right now, even though Bitcoin Cash is merely an altcoin. However, the concept is gaining some traction as more service providers express an interest in openly supporting this scaling situation moving forward. This also means the full-node implementations used by service providers will need to undergo some big updates, since they are not natively compatible with other blockchains.

This is why the Parity Bitcoin developers have made some significant revisions to their full-node implementation. Although it was working fine just before, it has now received an update to also support alternative versions of Bitcoin. Parity Bitcoin now also supports Bitcoin Cash, which is a positive sign for supporters of that particular implementation. The client also includes SegWit2x support, which will certainly shake things up quite a bit moving forward.

There are a lot of conflicting opinions regarding SegWit2x and its potential chances of surviving. With SegWit activating on the main Bitcoin blockchain and Bitcoin Cash larger blocks, it does not appear there is a direct need for a solution looking to combine the best of both worlds. Then again, if there is enough support from the community and a handful of miners, there is no reason to think SegWit2x cannot survive in the long run. Whether or not it will be successful, is a whole different topic of debate.

Parity Bitcoin has no bias toward any of these three scaling solutions. The team just wants to provide compatibility for different iterations of Bitcoin currently in existence, as well as those to be created in the future, if any. It is a smart approach to ensure there no compatibility issues later on, although a lot can change for SegWit2x between now and November of 2017. Anyone who uses this particular full-node implementation can decide which version of Bitcoin they want to support, regardless of whether that is 1, 2, or 3 different implementations.

The bigger question is how many service providers will embrace this new version. After all, not every exchange or wallet service provider will look to support anything but the main SegWit-enabled version of Bitcoin. Then again, we have seen multiple services integrate BCH functionality in recent weeks and it seems this is only the beginning. Whether or not we will see the same with SegWit2x, remains anybody’s guess at this point in time.

It is good to see the Parity Bitcoin developers acknowledge there is more than one version of Bitcoin and some people may actually want to support it in the future. Having more options is never a bad thing, even though it may not necessarily appeal to everyone right away. There is no need for any bias toward any of the scaling solutions, as Bitcoin is all about the community more than anything else.

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