After a guilty plea that when presented to the judge assigned him 63 months of time spent in a Federal prison and ordered nearly a million dollars in restitution, Barrett Brown's effort to have the restitution reduced has been denied by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Brown was ordered to pay restitution to Stratfor and others based on the full calculated damages for the crime of reporting on a crime where the actors responsible for committing the criminal act have not been found, convicted, or otherwise sanctioned. Continue reading
Category Archives: News
Largest Bitcoin Bet Resolved
The largest Bitcoin bet in terms of absolute value, where on BitBet.us Mircea Popescu laid down 1000 BTC of his own funds on the proposition that Bitcoin would outperform Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway class A stock has been resolved as "No" with Bitcoin's exchange rate having suffered over the past 12 months. A year ago Mircea announced the bet on his blog Trilema and further declared that to hedge the bet he had sold Berkshire. Asked about how he felt about the bet's final outcome he offered: Continue reading
OpenSSL Severe Vulnerability to be Revealed March 19th
The OpenSSL project has announced that on March 19th they will be releasing updates to address what they are referring to as a "highest severity defect" affecting all of their supported versions. Details of the vulnerability are being kept under embargo until the patches are released, though this time the OpenSSL has had the courtesy to disclose the issue to the LibreSSL core team. Here's a snippet from the OpenSSL security policy on high security vulnerabilities: Continue reading
Coinbase Compliance Chief Resigns
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Chief Compliance Officer of Coinbase has resigned. Chief Compliance Officer Martine Niejadlik resigned Coinbase after spending a bit more than a year with the organization. The Free Beacon notes that recently investors and regulators have been critical of Coinbase's "outreach" efforts where Coinbase has noted that Bitcoin does not respect international sanctions as well as Coinbase's failure to definitively achieve licensing in every US state it claims to operate.
Polish Bitcoin Embassy Closed
According to a post on a Polish language Bitcoin forum the Polish "Bitcoin Embassy" has closed. The operators report physical assault on at least one person affiliated with their effort along with a number of threatening communications directed at the embassy. The original announcement: Continue reading
Czech Ministry Fingers Heist Suspect
Czech Republic based Bitcoin exchange Bitcash.cz was allegedly hacked on November 11, 2013 and approximately 4000 bitcoins were stolen. The operator or operators almost succeeded in their efforts to remain anonymous with impunity, were it not for disgruntled users that named some suspected perpetrators in online forums. According to the 2014 yearly report of the analytics departmentt of the Czech Ministry of Finance, one of the named persons opened new bank account (in a Czech bank) and immediately transferred to there non-trivial amounts from an EU Bitcoin exchange, thus prompting a closer look from the Department. It concluded with a money laundering criminal complaint, which is currently waiting for court proceedings.
Mystery Startup Allegedly Raises Funds
A "stealth" startup, 21 Inc. is being reported to have allegedly raised 116 million United States dollars. The founder supposes the venture will do something to trigger mainstream Bitcoin adoption. A glance at their job advertisements (archived) suggests that this might just be another cloud mining venture as they appear to be looking for an "ASIC Design Engineer" and other hardware related positions.
Windows 'Stuxnet' Patch Left Vulnerability Open
Five years after Microsoft issued a patch (archived) to "close" the vulnerability that allowed the Stuxnet virus to propagate, Microsoft today issued another patch which purports to finish closing that same vulnerability. Reportedly rather than actually resolving the vulnerability the patch issued in 2010 merely increased the difficulty threshold for exploiting the open vulnerability. Continue reading
Bitcoin Stash Baffles Dutch Police
Police in the Netherlands have arrested three persons allegedly involved in cannabis cultivation and money laundering. During a raid in Sneek, Friesland police seized 135 cannabis plants, cash, jewels, and assorted other items. Allegedly a financial investigation shows the suspects received "440,000 euros" in Bitcoin, though how they received it apparently remains a mystery. Dutch legal treatment of cannabis involves a "tolerance policy" allowing for limited retail commerce in cannabis though production and wholesaling to retailers is prosecuted.
Tor Developers Set Funding Goal
The Daily Dot reports that the developers of the Tor software and network have decided to set an ambitious fund raising goal for this year. Specifically they aspire to reduce the portion of their funding which comes from the United States government to under half of their total. Last year roughly three quarters of their funding came from the United States Government. This follows another piece published by Yasha Levine on March 1st where Levine highlighted that the "activists" behind Tor, Open Whisper Systems, and other popular "privacy" ventures receive funding from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a Federal Agency born in the CIA which specializes in propaganda and psychological warfare. Continue reading