Significant problems in the online economy of the online Bitcoin virtual currency have been caused by a generalized hacker attack attempting to engage in fraudulent transactions, taking advantage of a vulnerability in the design of the entire system.
Posted by iGuRu.gr in the morning of 12 February 2014
According to the Guardian, three online bureaus have stopped the conversions from bitcoins to "real" money due to this phenomenon. Bitcoin's value has dropped significantly due to the attack, as 5 in February was in 926 dollars and yesterday fell to 530 at MtGox (one of the aforementioned bureaus). The suspensions are also made by Bitstamp (Slovenia) and BTC-e (Bulgaria).
It is noted that recently the Chinese and Russian authorities have begun to take action against the use of the famous virtual currency, which is widely used for money laundering, illicit financing and tax evasion.
"This is a denial of service attack (DoS)," said Jinjiang Li Englund, a spokesman for the Bitcoin Foundation. "Whoever does this does not steal coins, but manages to stop the confirmation of some transactions. It is important to clarify that attacks do not affect users' wallets ".
As clarified in a MtGox announcement, a Bitcoin software problem makes it possible to use the network to alter details of a transaction so that it seems that a currency transfer to a "wallet" did not happen (while it actually happened) . Since the transaction seems to be incomplete, bitcoins may be re-sent - a phenomenon that may result in the downgrade of the entire system due to a loss of confidence on the part of users. As reported in a related publication CNN, this problem has been highlighted by 2011, but has not been addressed by all bureaus. It is also noted that this type of attack is relatively easy and not at all costly for the perpetrators.
"This proves that Bitcoin is, at best, a beta-based venture," said Alex Daley, a Casey Research executive. "Until such a system can" see "widespread use for many years, you will continue to find problems in its implementation".
Source: naftemporiki.gr
