Yahoo malware turned PCs into Bitcoin miners

Yahoo malware turned PCs into Bitcoin miners

The cybercriminals who infected the computers of European Yahoo users apparently wanted to create a huge Bitcoin network.

Researchers at security firm Light Cyber revealed this week that one of the malware programs aimed to use the resources of infected PCs to perform the calculations necessary to run a Bitcoin network. Revealed earlier this month by fellow security firm Fox IT, the campaign spread its package by using Yahoo's ad server to deploy malicious ads. The malware took advantage of vulnerabilities in Java to install itself on computers that visited the ads.yahoo.com site.

The malware attack reportedly lasted from December 31 through January 3, when Yahoo took down the malicious ads. On Saturday, Yahoo acknowledged the issue through the following statement:

At Yahoo, we take the safety and privacy of our users seriously. On Friday, January 3 on our European sites, we served some advertisements that did not meet our editorial guidelines, specifically they spread malware. We promptly removed these advertisements. Users in North America, Asia Pacific and Latin America were not served these advertisements and were not affected. Additionally, users using Macs and mobile devices were not affected.


So far, Yahoo hasn't revealed any details on the infected computers or publicly advised affected users on what they should do. But security firm Surfright shed a bit more light on the situation.

Not every ad on the Yahoo advertisement network contained the malicious iframe, but if you have an outdated version of Java Runtime (you can check here) and you used Yahoo Mail the last 6 days, your computer is likely infected.

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China Bans Payment Companies From Clearing Bitcoin -- BitcoinNewsPortal

China Bans Payment Companies From Clearing Bitcoin

Chinese central bank officials told third-party payment service providers to stop offering clearing services to online Bitcoin exchanges, according to China Business News, which is affiliated with the Shanghai government.

Companies currently offering services must end services by the Chinese New Year, a weeklong holiday that begins on Jan. 31, the newspaper cited Zhou Jinhuang, deputy director of payment clearance at the People’s Bank of China, as saying at a meeting with more than 10 third-party payment service providers.

China’s central bank regulated the virtual currency for the first time on Dec. 5 by banning financial institutions and payment providers from conducting transactions in the virtual currency. Zhou was cited as saying by China Business News that the rules would be “strictly enforced.”

“The PBOC statement on Dec. 5 was somewhat vague and there is more clarity now,” Zennon Kapron, managing director of financial consultancy Kapronasia, said in an interview in Shanghai. “The way it’s reading now is that after the Chinese New Year, you won’t be able to get your money off the platforms.”

The PBOC’s news department didn’t immediately comment on the Bitcoin report when contacted by Bloomberg News. Two calls to Li Yue, director general of the central bank’s payment and settlement department, were unanswered.

Bank Ban

Bitcoin prices on BTC China, China’s largest exchange, plunged to as low as 3,251 yuan ($535) Dec.17,2013 before rebounding to 4,155 yuan at 4:16 p.m. local time. The drop in prices was triggered by concern that PBOC officials may visit lenders next to enforce the ban against Bitcoin settlement, Kapron said. The number of banks and payment providers that can transact Bitcoin has shrunk since the ban was announced, he said.

Bitcoin prices on the CoinDesk index jumped as much as 11 times since October, prompting former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to call the market a “bubble.”

Speculation that authorities in China may halt trading in Bitcoin surfaced after police arrested three people on suspicion of stealing money from investors through a fake online exchange.

GBL, a Bitcoin trading platform in China that began operating in May and had 4,493 registered users at the end of September, abruptly closed on Oct. 26, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Dec. 3., citing police in eastern Zhejiang privince’s Dongyang city.

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Bitcoins in Space

Richard Branson, the brazen Brit behind Virgin Galactic, made news last week when he announced that he has begun processing Bitcoin payments from would-be space tourists. (A woman in Hawaii has already booked her ticket, the company says.) But it turns out Branson’s not the only Bitcoin enthusiast looking toward the heavens. Jeff Garzik, one of the core developers of the Bitcoin software and a new addition to the team of developers at BitPay, a Bitcoin payment processor, has been quietly working on a side project aimed at making Bitcoin work by satellite.

Garzik first hinted at his intentions during his “State of the Coin” address at aBitcoin conference last year in London, where he briefly mentioned that he was working to launch a satellite that would be paid for in bitcoins. Last month, he announced the full purpose of the satellite. According to Garzik, it will repeatedly transmit the most recent block in the Bitcoin block chain—the latest transaction data processed by the Bitcoin network.

In succession, the block chain represents the entire ledger of Bitcoin transactions. And it’s the task of users—anyone running  a Bitcoin client—to both validate the calculations contained in the blocks and to send requests for new transactions to the peer-to-peer network of some 2000 to 5000 machines running the Bitcoin reference software.

“Without the peer-to-peer payment network, Bitcoin does not function today,” explains Garzik. A coordinated, distributed denial-of-service attack on all peer-to-peer nodes would effectively stop all payments across the network, and this is the threat that he wants to address.

“Use of the payment network is not a technical requirement of Bitcoin. If another mechanism for distributing Bitcoin data existed—be it satellite or flash drive via the postal service—then Bitcoin could continue to survive,” says Garzik.

Satellites do have their own vulnerabilities. It’s possible, for example, to disrupt them with a maneuver resembling a denial-of-service attack called double illumination, which simply jams the satellite with signals from overlapping frequencies. If the interference is strong enough, it can effectively cut satellite transmissions.

But Garzik is not looking for a single, foolproof solution. As he describes it, this is more of a move to diversify. “The general idea is the need to find varied means for block-chain data-set distribution,” he says. “We need all the resilience we can muster. Satellite distribution of public block-chain data would facilitate some level of resilience, as well as perhaps enabling use in geographic areas where Internet connectivity is unavailable or spotty.”

For the first phase of the project, Garzik is looking into CubeSats, miniature satellites that weigh only about a kilogram. The most likely scenario would be to hitch a ride on a rocket as a secondary payload. Lockheed Martin, for example, is working on a program that by 2015 would offer ride shares for CubeSats through its Athena launch services.

If he goes this route, Garzik won’t be able to precisely control which orbit theCubeSat ends up in. “Having a network of ground stations is critical to account for multiple orbits that might be achieved,” he says. These stations will then be responsible for transmitting block-chain updates to the satellite.

Garzik estimates that the cost of construction and launch will be about US $2 million and says that if necessary, he will be able to fund the first phase of the project on his own—with bitcoins. But he expects a lot of help. Last week, he set up a Bitcoin address for donations and has already received 25 bitcoins (more than US $20 000) from a group called BitcoinGrant.org.

Although Garzik has not offered a definitive accounting of how this money will be spent, the public nature of the Bitcoin block chain will enable donors to track where their money goes. “My ‘bitcoins in space’ project has a public, trackable donation address,” says Garzik. “If other space partners accept Bitcoin, we are able to disclose and track those purchases as well.”

If the first launch is a success, Garzik intends to follow up with more satellites. “In the short term, there are sufficient people interested in the Bitcoin community that fully funding Phase 1 is assured,” he says. “Based on the same factors and expressed interest, it seems likely that at least one demonstration satellite can be funded and flown in a three- to five-year time frame. Additional interest and funding will dictate how large the network may grow. At worst, listeners may have to wait a few hours to tune in and receive their block-chain broadcast, rather than a fully real-time feed that a cluster of satellites may provide.”

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