A spokesperson for the office of Avatar of Injustice Preet Bharara announced the arrest of Michael Murgio on Thursday. The FBI arrested Mr. Murgio in Palm Beach, Fla. on charges of participating in a scheme to allow Bitcoin exchange Coin.mx to take control of a local credit union. Along with his son, Murgio was on of three people named in a indictment regarding the scheme. Prosecutors allege that the defendants hacked into at least a dozen companies' computer networks and stole personal information of 100 million people. A report in Fortune magazine stated that while Murgio was not involved in any of the hacking offenses, he was responsible for the daily operations of Coin.mx and paid bribes amounting to $150,000 to the chairman of the credit union in order to help the exchange appear legitimate (archived).
Author Archives: shinohai
"Spring Into Money" Exchange Hacking Event Continues
The 2016 Spring Into Money exchange hacking even continues, as Chilean Bitcoin exchange Yaykuy reports on their website that "we can not attend to you at the moment" due to a server breach that they are still investigating. (archived) The extent of the attack remains unknown at this time, although the announcement states that no user data was compromised and that further updates would be communicated through the exchange's social media accounts.
The Parting Of ChangeTip Continues
Micro payment service ChangeTip continues to exhibit spasmodic death throes as it announced that users will be required to contact support if they wish to tip amounts in excess of 25 USD. Last week Qntra reported that the service itself is still seeking a buyer after the majority of it's employees were snapped up by AirBNB. ChangeTip support is limiting user deposits to $100 Users of the "service" still seem to be unaware that one can simply send any amount of Bitcoin desired to a person's public address without limits or incurring additional fees.
Darknet Market Nucleus Offline
Popular darknet market Nucleus has been offline for nearly a week, leading many users to speculate that yet another exit scam is in the works. The market was holding roughly 5,000 BTC in deposits for vendors and users. No message from /u/nucleusmarket has been forthcoming on reddit's r/darknetmarkets sub which seems to be the preferred meeting place on clearnet for users of such marketplaces.
Senior Swindler Sentenced
The Florida Sun-Sentinial reports that a Canadian man was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for swindling seniors out of nearly $1 million in funds, some of which were converted to Bitcoin in an attempt to make hiding them easier.(archived). Stephan Moskwyn pled guilty to a money laundering charge at a federal courthouse in Miami. The scheme involved social engineering tactics on Seniors and vulnerable people, often requesting the person send Bitcoin or Moneypaks to assist a relative in financial trouble. Moskwyn was arrested in a Miami International Airport terminal in October of 2015.
A search revealed no Mr. Moskwyn in The Most Serene Republic's Web of Trust.
Voorhees ShapeShift Hit Inside Job?
A recent update from ShapeShit.io owner Erik Voorhees indicates that the recent attack on their service was potentially an inside job. An announcement published earlier on Reddit states that the company has been working with a group of forensic specialists from Ledger Labs to investigate the theft, which involved an undisclosed amount of BTC and altcoins from their hot wallets. Voorhees further stated they are working to restore the service and would publish more information as it becomes available.
Ethereum Foundation Outsources Forum To Censorship Experiment
The Ethereum community has announced it will be shutting down it's official forums in two weeks, preferring to congregate with all the other crypto-cretins on Reddit. Ethereum price has been in a freefall for some time, prices having dipped 2.51% in the past 24 hours alone. The move seems to suggest that community funds are spread thin at the moment, with need to allocate their resources in other areas in order to keep the scam afloat. The information in the forums will be preserved on archive.org for those that need a good laugh in the future.
ChangeTip The Company Bought, ChangeTip The Product Still For Sale.
Airbnb, a website that allows people to list room for travelers, has acquired the failing micro payment service ChangeTip, according to qz.com. (source) (archived) ChangeTip managed to raise around 5 million dollars in startup funding from various groups, including Pantera Capital despite building their business model around servicing clueless reddit users. The deal reportedly did not include the ChangeTip codebase, which reddit user nobodybelievesyou described as "a bug riddled reddit bot and a stack of user data" (source)
More Sourceforge Fail
User d3k4y on reddit has reported that the Sourceforge version of pywallet contains malicious code that will send users private keys to a remote server located at bieber.atwebpages.com (source, archived). Once a well-known source for a variety of software downloads, the site has steadily declined into a haven for malware and other assorted junk. This incident serves as a reminder of the importance of always verifying checksums of any software before attempting to run it in a live environment.
Weak RNG Assists Man's Lottery Fortune
Iowa prosecutors have recently uncovered evidence that a former computer security worker modified a RNG used to pick numbers for several State lotteries. Eddie Raymond Tipton has already been tried and convicted on two counts of fraud, but officials only recently uncovered the manner in which he was able to produce the winning numbers for six different drawings worth millions between 2005-2011.
Investigators found that Tipton introduced a rootkit that used specially crafted DLL's to redirect drawings based on specific conditions, using an algorithm he could easily solve. ArsTechnica reported that it was unclear "if officials have tightened the requirements to make future tampering harder" by trashing all their Microsoft computers and using a more secure Linux-based distribution instead.