Bitcoin Forum

I'm after being in contact with one of GLBSE's users who's funds have didn't seem to show up. After more investigation we discovered that he has a trojan/malware.

The malware recognises any bitcoin addresses that are copied, and replaces them with a new address, when you copy an address from your service you're using (GLBSE.com, Intersango.com) to your bitcoin client to transfer your coins, the malware replaces them with the scam address, so that your coins are sent to the hacker.

When I have more details on the software involved/responsible I will update, in the meantime make sure to double check the address you copy/paste.

I believe that this is a windows only vulnerability.

Nefairo

Figures, Linux is not nearly exploitable.

So am I correct in assuming that a countermeasure could be verifying the address before sending? Or does it make the change in a way that is not visible to the user?

what's the dodgy bitcoin address? Is it static or does it change every time?!

From the user.

It's a new address each time.

I believe that visually verifying the address will protect against this.

The addresses so far:
17PPGjFhmvt75yPAd5yFv9iYyBGQfHevnd
14Yq1jKRqwbb9oExcyZFZ6a92QTk333WEZ

I mean that sucks but on the other hand I got to say awesome to the malware writer.  Get the user to send coins to the wrong address.  No need to keylog, hack the client, look for wallet.dat, spoof RPC, etc.  Just get the user to send you money.

Possibly related:
 - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/400212/how-to-copy-to-the-clipboard-in-javascript

Trojan that replaces the filled data for bank transfers was around at least 4 years ago. Adopting such system for Bitcoin is no brainer.

I was looking for exploit to copy address to clipboard using javascript but it did not work with FireFox without user intervention. I abandoned the idea.

I've been WONDERING when the first hacker would do this. Its so obvious.

Any info what the optimised miner was? or a link to the thread?

No I've not heard back.

Is it possible for malicious code to detect a <mousebutton-down> event on a send dialog box, then insert the hackers address a millisecond later? In such a case, visual verification may not thwart the attack.

A 'lock address' function could help. The address locks the moment is it pasted into the field. No unlock (except cancel).

or just a regular confirmation dialog... Are you sure you want to send 1 million bitcoins to 1ffjfitetwrexjf...? YES / NO

neheminer 2.0 is believed to currently be the miner, discussion now on btc-e chat.

marked

i know... i'm the one discussing, lol

http://xml.ssdsandbox.net/view/91c66258f4294c95a77a6aaa8ef3ec39

it reads your wallet.dat as well, so if you notice this make sure to make a new wallet for your coins

Thats funny, the affected user was sent to me from btc-e.

oops, didn't see far enough back to see you were already there talking about it.

marked

Check address.

Unfortunately it's fairly easy to write software to send a Yes/No the instant the confirmation dialog appears (I built a tool for doing this in order to get around some shareware nags years ago).

Perhaps someone could code vhash into their webpage and into a client.

Hm. Glad I double-check the entire address before sending out of habit (originally, I didn't know Satoshi Client checks for address validity, and always worried I would accidentally not copy the entire address). [subbed]

subscribing

another argument pro aliases

And another reason not to use windows with valuable data...

Any other OS just as vulnerable to trojan horses if users installs the horses themselves.

300 million windows 7 users are not going to switch to linux. The windows bitcoin client should be hardened as much as possible against these kinds of attacks, because windows users are by far the largest demographic. We need them if bitcoin is to succeed.

True. But almost every horse out there is targeting windows users. So, at least by now, being out of it is being safer...

And the diversity and complexity of the free software ecosystem also makes more difficult to make horses which works out of the box on every setup. Some users will choose gnome, some kde, some unity, some fluxbox, and so on... It's not that easy to write exploits which would work with every possible setup...


Of course, and developers are working hard on this. And hopefully, p2sh will be a step in that direction. But people have to know that they have safer choices...

Here's the guy: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=74828.msg828719;boardseen#new