Today on the Sourceforge hosted Bitcoin-development mailing list Gavin Andresen has threatened to leave his present group of Bitcoin software developers over their objections to his demands for a rapid hardfork of the Bitcoin network. In the event his demands are not met Gavin plans to join Mike Hearn's Bitcoin-XT project which is a fork of the Bitcoin client where Hearn implements patches that Gavin's current affiliated developers find too risky to implement in any mainline Bitcoin client. If Gavin defects to Bitcoin-XT he plans to work with Hearn to lobby merchants, miners, and businesses to move to Bitcoin-XT. Previously Mike Hearn was responsible for the March 2013 Bitcoin network crisis. The full text of Gavin's message is mirrored below for posterity. Continue reading
Former US House Speaker Indicted on Attempting to Evade Financial Surveillance
Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1999 through 2007, was indicted today on charges of structuring bank withdrawals to avoid mandatory bank reporting and lying about the purpose of the withdrawals to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hastert is alleged to have made the cash withdrawals to "compensate for and conceal" some past transgression against an unnamed individual which ended with Hastert and the other party reaching a privately negotiated settlement. Prior to his career in politics Hastert was a teacher at Yorkville High School in Illinois where he additionally coached wrestling and football. Continue reading
DoJ Charges Dark Market Coupon Merchant
The US Department of Justice reports (archive) it has charged a Louisiana man with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit trademark counterfeiting. Beau Wattigney AKA PurpleLotus/GoldenLotus/MoxDiamond and NickMode is alleged to have sold counterfeit coupons on the original Silk Road and later Blake Benthall's Silk Road 2.0. The coupons entitled the bearer to massive discounts on products such as US $50 Visa Gift Cards which could be purchased for $0.01 each. Wattigney is alleged to have defrauded more than 50 manufacturers, retailers and online coupon retailers in excess of US $1,000,000. Continue reading
IRS Confirms Breach Reported 2 Months Ago
The United States Internal Revenue Service has now confirmed that a March 30th report by Brian Krebs where he revealed an online portal operated by the IRS for disseminating tax transcripts had been leaking personal information and tax records to parties who ought not to have been authorized to view them. According to the the IRS more than one hundred thousand records were accessed in this manner. This news follows an epic volume of falsified tax returns filed this year sending tax overpayments to fraudsters to the point where major tax preparation companies had to stop handling state tax returns. The gravity of this leak's potential impact on the tenth of a million affected persons can not be underestimated considering the manner in which the fiat state handles identity: Continue reading
Former Vault of Satoshi Customers Can't Collect
The Brantford Expositor reports that Vault of Satoshi still has a number of customers whose funds have not been returned, even though Vault of Satoshi ceased operations back in February. Expositor reported Susan Gamble along with general allegations against Vault of Satoshi's operators present the story of a customer, Scott Campbell: Continue reading
Ulbricht to be Sentenced Friday
While the world waits to see what might happen to the Ulbricht case over the likely next decade and a half it spends traversing appellate courts, Ulbricht must first pass the formality of sentencing after the show trial staged for him by Preet Bharara. Ulbricht won't be sentenced until this Friday, May 29th but the prosecution's continued shenanigans began a new nearly a month ago when Bharara's team introduced six overdose deaths they would like to pin on Ulbricht, but apparently weren't confident enough to present at trial in a manner reminiscent of that time they forgot to mention they were getting ready to arrest a number of Federal agents who investigated Ulbricht. Continue reading
Bluetouff conviction upheld by French Supreme Court
Reports are in that the Supreme Court of France has upheld a conviction by the state against French blogger, journalist, and web service provider Olivier Laurelli1 for downloading free and publicly available documents obtained from a Google search. Using a 1929 law criminalising the theft of electricity in combination with the 2009 HADOPI legislation,2 the prosecution has sought 3,000 Euros in damages for Laurelli's procurement of documents from the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) website in 2012. Back in 2013, Laurelli described his court case to date and how he came to find himself in this position on his personal blog. Continue reading
On the journalism side, Laurelli founded the news site Reflets.info ; on the web services side, he operates the web security firm Toonux ; online, he operates under the alias "Bluetouff" and lists PGP fingerprint 9F9C 7924 EB82 C810 24D5 6143 6985 0860 7991 E873 on his personal blog, though this pseudonym and key aren't registered with either bitcoin-otc (gribble) or bitcoin-assets (assbot) at the time of publishing. ↩
HADOPI is an acronym for "Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des œuvres et la Protection des droits d'auteur sur Internet" and consists of an escalating series of e-mail warnings and ISP-level monitoring of traffic for users found to have infringed upon copyrighted material. ↩
Vietnam's Ministry of Justice Suffers Ransomware Attack
Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Niên reports (archive) that several computers located at Vietnam's Ministry of Justice recently became infected with ransomware leading to the encryption of important data. Following the ransomware attack, other agencies under the helm of the MoJ were advised to guard against such infections in a stock standard manner as is typically suggested by government – don't visit unfamiliar websites and take extra caution opening email attachments. Continue reading
Six Months In, OKCoin Relinquish Control Of Bitcoin.com
Despite a rumoured five year contract between blockchain.info and the owner of bitcoin.com which would see blockchain.info manage the desirable domain name, management of the site was switched to OKCoin in December of last year. At that time OKCoin hoped to build a site which would raise more awareness (archive) about Bitcoin. Six months later, OKCoin has announced it will no longer be managing bitcoin.com due to contractual conflicts with Roger Ver. OKCoin allege Ver responded to the decision to part ways with threats of publicly announcing OKCoin engage in fraud and potential lawsuits. Continue reading
Bitfinex Hot Wallet Possibly Compromised
Bitfinex has announced (archive) that their hot wallet may have been compromised and in a move reminiscent of the Bitstamp hack earlier this year is asking customers to cease deposits to older addresses at this time. The full statement reads: Continue reading