Day: March 26, 2018

The Spanish police authority announced the arrest of ‘Denis K.’, the suspected leader of a cyber-crime gang who allegedly stole up to 1 billion Euros from banks all around the country, according to Europol.

Ukranian-Russian Cybercriminals Caught After Laundering €1 billion Worth of BTC

As modus operandi, the gang made up of Russian and Ukranian nationals would gain control of banks’ network and servers by targeting bank employees with emails infecting their computers. Once inside the servers, the gang altered account balances and instructed automatic teller machines to issue cash.

The group also set up a Bitcoin farm as a means of laundering money, according to the authorities. After cooperation between police forces in the United States, Asia (Taiwan), and Europe (Romania and Belarus), as well as private cybersecurity companies, the suspected leader of the cybercriminal group was arrested in Alicante, a port city with approximately 750,000 residents.

The Ukranian-Russian criminal organization has been active since 2013, with members in 40 countries and carrying out attacks on 100 financial institutions, said Europol. The Interior Ministry of Spain, led by Mr. Juan Ignacio Zoido, said three other members of his organization were arrested.

The Interior Ministry of Spain added that the Alicante police seized €500,000 worth of jewels, two luxury cars during the raid, and two homes valued at approximately €1 million. The authorities have also frozen bank accounts associated with the suspects.

“With that level of access, the nefarious individuals authorize fraudulent bank transfers, raise the balances of mule accounts or command affected ATMs to spit out the money for them,”

said the statement from Europol, noting that the gang used the Russian mafia to coordinate the work of the ‘mules’ they used to extract money from cash points that they attacked. They switched to the Moldovan mafia from 2016 onwards.

The cybercriminal operation was able to accumulate about 15,000 Bitcoins as the money was converted into the cryptocurrency at exchange houses in Russia and Ukraine to be later transferred to their accounts.

‘Denis K.’, the alleged gang leader, would load prepaid cards with Bitcoin through financial platforms in Gibraltar and the UK, and then spend them in Spain on the aforementioned goods, such as cars and homes.

Crime is a topic often discussed within the cryptocurrency community as the money laundering tradition may be shifting from fiat currencies to digital assets. Recently, a Turkish gang has extorted 450 Bitcoins from a wealthy businessman. In February, four men linked to a Taiwanese gang were arrested by police for having allegedly stolen $100,000 worth of Bitcoin.

The post Europol Arrests Gang After Laundering €1 Billion Worth of Bitcoin appeared first on NewsBTC.

CBOE recommends that the SEC not interfere in the development of Bitcoin exchange-traded-funds. #NEWS

Bitcoiin2Gen Ambassador Steven Seagal exits the project as the ICO ends, though he hasn’t posted any comments regarding the move. #NEWS

Former JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters recently unveiled a new software suite designed to help propel the next wave of business blockchain growth.

FashionTV brings blockchain to the multi-billion dollar industry to give models a fair chance at making it big; affluent FTV Coin Deluxe holders will gain exclusive access to everything they’ve ever seen on FashionTV: parties, VIP events, fashion shows, yachts, and everything in between.

Internet security firm Symantec has published their 23rd Internet Security Threat Report. The document identifies an increase in the incidents of cyber crime that involve cryptocurrency in some way. The most prominent examples are cryptojacking and ransomware attacks.

More Cyber Criminals Using Cryptocurrency

The report largely focuses on the following areas: cryptojacking, ransomware, targeted attacks, mobile attacks, and attacks leveraging the software supply chain.

Symantec claims that the cryptojacking was the largest trending attack of 2017. They worked out that there had been an 8,500% increase in the number of examples detected on computers.

Cryptojacking is the use of a computer system to mine cryptocurrency without the owner of the machine knowing. Privacy-focused cryptos are often favoured. Monero (XMR), for example, is a popular coin to secretly mine. Firstly, because provides a large level of anonymity for the criminal. Secondly, because regular CPUs can mine the coin effectively. This is in contrast to digital currencies like Bitcoin that require specialised equipment to generate new coins.

Symantec speculates that cyber criminals were drawn to cryptojacking in 2017 because of the surge in the price of practically all existing cryptocurrencies. Monero, for example, started the year at around $13 per coin. By the end of 2017, a single XMR coin cost around $350.

In addition to the immense profitability of cryptojacking, Symantec highlights how easy it can be to turn an unknowing computer user’s machine into a cryptocurrency miner. They state that it often requires no more than a few lines of code running on a device.

Since cryptojacking involves a large amount of processing power, it can often slow users’ machines down. Symantec also states that overworking a CPU in such a way can cause “batteries to overheat and devices [can] become unusable.” In addition, the security experts claim that cryptojacking could cause even greater problems for organisations that are being billed based on CPU usage.

The Internet Security Threat Report went on to mention ransomware as another of the major online threats of 2017. Ransomware attacks involve hackers encrypting the contents of a computer system. They then demand paying (usually in cryptocurrency) to unlock the machine.

The cybersecurity experts highlighted the WannaCry attack of last year as one of the largest examples of such cybercrime. They state that demands made by groups committing such attacks had actually fallen this year since the attacks of 2016 frequently overpriced themselves. A blog post about the report stated:

“In 2017 cyber criminals seemed to find the sweet spot that victims are willing to pay. The average ransom demand in 2017 was $522, less than half of the average of 2016.”

Being an emerging currency for the internet, it should come as no surprise that criminals are favouring cryptos for their attacks. Already in 2018, there have been examples of ransomware attacks against government departments in Atlanta. For now, there is nothing to suggest that such attacks will diminish during 2018.

The post Symantec’s “Internet Security Threat Report” Highlights Crypto’s Increased Use in Cyber Crime appeared first on NewsBTC.

Singapore blockchain start-up Qtum caught everyone’s attention this week when it was listed on fast-growing Hong Kong crypto exchange Binance.

On Monday when the move was made, the price shot up 42% and continued to rise over subsequent days as traders and investors responded positively  to the addition, although the price has come off somewhat since then to trade at $18.93 on Thursday 22 March.

As part of the listing, Qtum is giving away 50,000 coins to Qtum holders on Binance, ranked by trading volume. The competition ends on 27 March, with the coins distributed to winners within five days of the competition ending. More details are available here.

Binance recently dropped 82 coins from its trading pairs in an effort to raise the overall quality of the crypto asset markets it offers.

The blockchain platform is the 18th-ranked coin according to Coinmarketcap, with a valuation of $1.67 billion.

In some ways it is surprising that Binance hasn’t listed Qtum up until now given the adoption levels of its blockchain, which is currently running on up to 6,000 nodes, with the majority of those being in China, an impressive figure considering that Ethereum has 20,000.

Qtum’s blockchain is a unique proposition that takes the best from both Bitcoin and Ethereum, and combines those parts in its Qtum Virtual Machine (QVM).

Its blockchain is a fork from Bitcoin Core and, specifically, is based on bitcoin’s UTXO model which gives it stability and security.  On top of that it has built its own decentralised application and smart contract platform which is similar to Ethereum but without the inefficient proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Instead, QVM uses proof-of-stake (PoS), making the blockchain far easier to deploy for businesses.

The advantages of Qtum’s approach is that on the one hand its Account Abstraction Layer allows any number of virtual machines to plug into its blockchain, while on the other it provides interoperability between blockchains and it is relatively straightforward for businesses to hook up their legacy systems.

Qtum’s lightweight proof-of-stake system means the blockchain can be run on smartphones and even Internet-of-Things devices. That’s a big competitive advantage over other chains, given that half of all web traffic is now on mobile, with that figure set to rise inexorably.

With this technology in place, the  Singapore-based outfit led by Patrick Dai, a former Alibaba product manager, is able to pitch itself as the business-friendly blockchain. In that regard it is having some notable successes.

Among its business partners are Baofeng, the Chinese video streaming platform and 360, a pioneer in network and cyber security software in China. 360 has 600 million customers that have installed its software. Qtum is helping 360 to set up a blockchain research lab and will be applying its distributed ledger technology to enhancing existing products and developing new ones.

Baofeng has announced plans to build a 50,000 node content delivery system and has teamed up with Qtum to help turn that vision into a reality.

Another recent win was the inking of a deal with SpaceChain, which is using Qtum’s blockchain to put a network of CubeSat satellites into orbit. The space start-up has the backing of venture capitalist Tim Draper.

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

Cyber-criminals attempting to con people out of their Bitcoin are getting more and more creative — but we’ve never seen anything like this: a would-be victim has convinced a Bitcoin scammer to paint his face like a raccoon and rifle through his neighbor’s trash can. The pictures of their interaction and resulting photos have since gone viral as the prankster somehow got the Egyptian conman to comply with strange demands.

As reported by the Irish Mirror, Belfast man Neil Murphy, 34, was sent a friend request on Facebook with messages inquiring about Bitcoin. Murphy’s suspicions were immediately aroused that it could be a scam, but he decided to have some fun. 

Instead of telling Yousef, who said he was from Egypt, to leave him alone, he agreed to send him 0.15 Bitcoin if Yousef dressed up as a raccoon and foraged through his neighbor’s trash cans. When Yousef asked for $100 worth of Bitcoin in a bid to secure the deal, Murphy said:

“I cannot trust you. I have been scammed before. “Last time I sent somebody the Bitcoin and he sent me a picture of him dressed as a badger instead of a racoon and he didn’t even scavenge in a bin.”

Yosef, somehow obliged, saying: “I’ll wear the raccoons and send you a picture.”

“I also love raccoons very much and we have a farm that has a lot of them.”

He then told Murphy that it would take him at least two days to source the outfit and take the pictures. Murphy replied: “Ok maybe you don’t even need to buy a costume you could just put some white stripes on your face and you will look like an natural raccoon.”

For the final set of photos, Murphy made some more demands. He asked Yousef to wear a black and white striped top — for a more realistic raccoon look — and said he wanted there to be more trash in the photo and for it to be taken at night.

The desperate scammer complied and sent more photos of himself in the striped top, this time scavenging in a huge over-turned trash can. Murphy, then, decided to end things and told Yousef he would not be receiving any money. In response the scammer blocked him. 

The full conversation can be found here.

The post Desperate Man Dresses Up As Raccoon To Steal Bitcoins appeared first on NewsBTC.

Do we sell or buy? 🤔 #PRICE_ANALYSIS

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.