Bitcoin Forum

A cyber attack that is spreading accross the world

https://www.axios.com/ransomware-attack-is-an-escalation-of-cyber-hacks-2449233920.html

Attackers ask victims to pay 300 dollar in bitcoin after their hard drive is encrypted.

In your opinion can it cause governments to make the usage of bitcoin illegal as they can't prosecute peoples using bitcoin for illegal purposes?

These are really old news. You're really late in posting this. The ransomware attacks has already died down as most anti-viruses have already made efforts in preventing this from happening. Hence this ransomware has already died down and probably the only ones that will get infected are those without adequate protection. But really, this is old news, can't say anything more to it.

No, if that was going to happen it would have already happened with prior outbreaks like this. Cash is used for ransom payments as well but that doesn't make cash bad or cause governments to ban it.

https://blockchain.info/address/1Mz7153HMuxXTuR2R1t78mGSdzaAtNbBWX

This latest attack is another big failure for the would-be thieves. They are causing a lot of harm but not doing themselves much good.

I have seen it on the news earlier but only the part where the message from the hackers was shown which they were asking the ransomware victim to send $300 worth of bitcoin . Actually the news wasn't all about usage of bitcoin on ransomware attacks there was only some cases that the hacker was asking for a certain amount worth of bitcoin and I don't think it could cause the government to ban bitcoin as the main concern of the authorities is the malware named "petya" and those intruders who keep on spreading it .

It can't make them make bitcoin illegal and this is just the latest round of these attacks  there will no doubt be more.

Why in cyberattacks begins to remember exactly today, when Bitcoin reached $ 2,500? Does this really make sense and my people want to create a crypto currency for the exchange. Perhaps in this there is a hidden meaning to it so the manipulation of the market leads to some success for some users.

No it's not. The OP is not talking about Wannacry but another one named "Petya" working close to the previous. The thing is even if people pay the 300$ in Bitcoin they can't contact the thieves, as their email has been closed by the email service

SIDE NOTE: Why $300? As ransom-ware spreads the asking ransom prices have converged on $300.  I wonder if that has been determined to be the sweet spot? Not too high, not too low.

 ???

I think this certain ransomware is planning on targeting like personal computers and those small businesses, not corporations, hospitals, and bigger companies, hence the low $300 compared to the past $1000 or more demands. I'm not 100% sure about this, though. Also, I think $300 is the price whereas businesses or companies will be like "let's just pay this ransom instead of spending hours and hours doing backups and restores", it's just that it has a higher chance of the victim paying up I think.

There is now a resurgence of the same attack that happened weeks ago and it is now affecting many parts of Europe. And Bitcoin is again used as the currency where victims are asked to pay so they can get back their data. I am sure that this will not be the last for this happening and sadly many would assume that Bitcoin is also a conspirator of this crime.

But there is nothing we can do to stop these hackers from using Bitcoin as Bitcoin is for everybody who want to takes advantage of its platform regardless if they are having good intentions or having a mind of a criminal in the cyberspace.

This incident can certainly pushed some government agencies to look into how to regulate more Bitcoin and for some corrupt governments out there maybe they can be thinking on how to limit and stop the influence of Bitcoin all in the name of stopping cyber-crimes.

I dont really know what's the problem with those mentally retarded. I mean, cyber attacks here, cyber attacks here and there and it's like they are doin it just for fun like it's just a game for them right? Idunno ah, but thesr retardeds should fine or they desrve to be imprisoned. And then now they will demand a money from us? lool mentally retarded

This is a modern way or form of extortion.According to latest news they received about 3.751 BTC or nearly $9281 dollar. It is the modified version of Petya virus.

Link : http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/28/ransomware-cyberattack-petya-bitcoin-payment.html

i am afriad if attacks like this keeps happeing then government will see bitcoin as something bad and its not good for bitcoin.,
but its not just about bitcoin, if government bans bitcoin then attackers will ask for other crypto currency deposits.,

This is really old news and I think there is already some anti ransomeware available for this one, recent one I have heard was from russia and it is quite new version of ransomeware.

This type of story is not new at all. Hackers use Bitcoin technology to get the payments from their victim and it is clever since it is difficult to track Bitcoin transaction if the user is so knowledgeable about it. And since they are hackers, it will not be a surprise. These hackers just use Bitcoin because it is convenient for them but this does not justifies that Bitcoin is illegal. It just happened that Bitcoin was there and the hackers utilize it for their own advantage.

They are not retarded you are, they simply doing this to let people know this is the punishment for using illegal copies of windows, instead of paying for the ransom wouldn't it be better if you'd paid less to buy an original windows?

As long as there are victims that are willing to pay Bitcoins to all these hackers that demand ransom from them, I don't see these type of incidents to stop anytime soon, even though they did not managed to received a lot of bitcoins on this, it is still a good income for these hackers. And since they are demanding the ransom in bitcoins, it would be quite hard for the government to track them down and take legal actions.

I think that many authorities actually like Bitcoin because it's traceable. The real problems will start when criminals use Monero and Zcash and governments see that the funds are untraceable.

Ya this might happen, and many countries who are thinking to make BTC legal, will surely give a second thought. Though if they think about it practically it won't hamper the status.

Already this new Petya Ransomware, a new strain of ransomware has affected nearly 1500-2000 users/systems.

Ransom ware attacks keeps on coming with new names and i think it will keep on continuing like this ,you have to take security seriously ,if not you will have to pay a bigger fine if you plan to surf the internet without any security measures.

Don't worry about it. If it were not bitcoin it would have been some other mode of payment they would have asked. Bitcoin is just being used as a currency, If it were not bitcoin, they would have asked for payments in some otherway. We have to deal with all sorts of people. Moreover, I don't think the governments can ban crypto as this stage.

This won't have any bad impact on bitcoin in my opinion as this anonymity feature is there in bitcoin since the start and it was made to hide our money from government officials. So how is this bitcoins fault is someone is taking advantage of this feature. And this can mostly have a great impact on price of bitcoin as last time the wannacry attack had happened bitcoin shooted almost 400$ so maybe this time we can see a 3000$ hit.

That is a very good point,the hackers plan on making the victim think twice before hiring a IT specialist which would cost them more than that to recover the data and secure the network,instead all they have to do is pay the hacker and get back your data,that is a wise plan.  :D People should understand the importance of security and with these sort of attacks people would take them seriously i guess,till now no one is caught sending these ransom wares and that is a scary thought.

   Yes this cyber attack is spreading around the world and it has been terrorize a lot of people, I do think that is not the governments idea to make bitcoin illegal or to make bad reputation of bitcoin. It has more like advertise in a lot of people because when they attack happens it gain many attentions and people watching the news and people who got affected by the attack will think what is a bitcoin when they don't know what it is. Bitcoin got more attention around the world than making it look bad in other people because we know that the attack happen because of the terrorists acts but the truth is that bitcoin is just like money. When someone asks for a ransom the money is not the bad guy its the one that asks for the ransom. So for me this attacks is the purpose to make the bitcoin gain more attention on a lot of people and around the world especially the bitcoin price increasing everyday and of course the attackers are doing this also because the market price of bitcoin.

Merkel talked already about regulation of cryptocurrencies

What does it has to do with the cyber attack.These sort of ransomware attacks are gaining attention for the past few months simply because majority of the countries and businesses are getting affected with it and it is really sad that it keeps on coming back with new names.

Hackers are hackers and bitcoin should not be known as a dirty coin or as a coin that is being used only by hackers and from thieves.

People are being aware of bitcoin and it's use, many people are joining the crypto world very fast and the number is getting increased very fast and understand that bitcoin is just another currency with a high potential.

Ransomware is spreading very fast I thought they stopped a bit with the recent attack which was the largest one but they keep going.

i think no
because money is actually can work in the same way
but if some country would stop the work of bitcoin, this reason would be good enough to close it

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDZgl8iXUAA1fzb.jpg:large

This picture speaks a thousand words, and as shown, do not open suspicious links/emails, and always create a backup (of files, wallet keys, stuff that are important).

This is the downside of Bitcoin. Looks like the number of related attacks will just get more frequent, and harder to tackle. :(

why it should cause any difference versus what happened in the past with ransomware?

it's not worse than other attack, and 300 in btc is a joke you really think the government care about $300?

don't make me laugh it like we are talking about someone robbed on the street...

In majority of civilized countries that won't affect bitcoin, considering how hackers used to ask for ransoms in different types of currencies ages ago (From mobile transfers to PM and Libertypay transactions).
This isn't the fault of bitcoin in the end, but for the hackers who made the program, and hence they are the ones to be punished under the law.

The best way to avoid this kind of threats is by 1) Antiviruses and other security softwares blocking any likely threat, even without the user permission and 2) Google and Browsers blocking suspected websites immediately,
First with WannaCry and now with this, the best method to avoid them is better security and more caution.

No it wouldn't make it illegal,it's a different matter really
This is a security problem,not some economical problem that will hinder a country
I think this will make cryptocurrency to be known to many people and make them try to use it

No, That's not even a point to discuss in the majority of 1st world countries were laws can't be passed on whims like that, and if they did that, it will be utterly embarrassing for law enforcement agencies, confessing they are not capable of catching the criminals.

If we are on it: why don't we forbid everything that could potentially be harmful to people? Ban knives, guns, cars (they are used by terrorists too!)
Fiat money are totally anonymous too, far better to spend and use, so let's ban fiat money!
Did you know that before bitcoin was used as a main payment method for ransomware, criminals had other ways to collect money?
They were asking for prepaid card numbers, vouchers or premium phone call/text message.

Probaly yeah. They would profit the most if people actully do pay them, someone is never going to pay an insanely high amount while $300 is quite reasonable and someone might consider just paying it rather than going to all the hassle.

yeah, i heard about that virus. it's called Petya.A and his owners are very clever, so they are asking for money in bitcoins!

It would seem that more recent report suggest this latest outbreak is a non-reversible attack.   It was built to destroy data.

it's an old article oh well, when it comes for money everything possible even in deceiving people. actually it is opposite instead banning bitcoin they legalising bitcoin in different countries like Japan and Russia although bitcoin can used on illegal activities, the government saw many good side of bitcoin than it's darker side.

Hm... no? Protecting People from being attacked by viruses or malwares is developers' jobs, if the governments ban Bitcoin, the hackers will choose another way to steal users' money, I'm sure that they can not ban every single currency.

Even if they make Bitcoin illegal what will it do if people keep attacking computer systems using ransomware? They'll keep doing it and if they really worry then they can send the Bitcoin/never use it outside of Bitcoin-friendly countries and get past their law enforcement (mostly) that way.

Making Bitcoin illegal would do nothing aside from hurt the normal user, which is probably something they would want to do anyways. Plus it would make it much, much harder to comply with demands of ransomware attackers if there were no means to actually acquire Bitcoin.

I can agree because if Bitcoin would become illegal, ransomware will go back to using traditional banking system. It functioned really good back at these times, especially in Russia.

We really don't know what's in the mind of those bastards who instead of getting their God given talent to good use, but choose the easy way and try to hijack people and demanded that they get paid. I'm with you saying that they should be imprisoned they deserved it and I hope they will be captured and see who are crying now in the end.

As some people pointed it before me, this is not new. There is absolutely nothing to do against it, except educating people so that they get better protection online.

People like this are the ones that give government an upper argument to legislate against crypto currency in general and they will win the argument but hiding under the fact that they are using bitcoin is not something that can be forever because along the line, they will make a mistake and they mistake will cost them everything that's when they will feel the full weight of the law just like one guy that was sentenced to life without the option of parole.

I posted this not because of cyber attack. It is not important that what attackers have  done. There are lots of other illegal actions, not only this.
What was important for me was the method of payement. Governments cannot prosecute people when they use bitcoin. Othervise when people use traditional banking system It is easier for governments.
Maybe in future criminals ask for bitcoin from victims for other things.

The problem with $300 is that not everyone could spare that much amount if the attack happens in the third world country and that too home computers rather than companies because it is a hell lot of money for some of them.It might be a laughing amount for government but that wont be the case if any individual from a third world country is affected.

YET another attack... What have we learned? Nothing apparently. Or that companies still do absolutely nothing to protect themselves even after attacks previously occured. I'm willing to bet the attack vector was exactly the same...

Don't be stupid why do you think last attack aimed only illegal copies of windows operating systems? yeah hackers were so smart to attack people just like that. I am willing to bet after the previous attack thousands of original copies of windows sold out simply because people were afraid of getting hacked and lose access to their important files. no way I can be convinced that it was a random cyber attack only to earn money in small amounts.

That is incorrect. Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous. It means that it is not exactly traceable. Think about it in this way. When you send a transaction to an address, the transaction gets stored in the public ledger known as the blockchain. Here, everyone can see the transaction. However, all they see is two Bitcoin addresses. They don't and can't know who sent the transaction to whom.

Thus, Bitcoin is not traceable. The reason why these ransomware attacks are asking Bitcoin instead of anything else, is solely because of this pseudo-anonymity.

No, the ransomware was originally meant to target business and large corporations. But it began to spread and affect smaller households and personal businesses.

But I don't know about the ransom of $300. I would expect it to be more too. Perhaps they believed that the ransomware would be so successful that it would earn a lot of money from that low price of $300. Maybe victim had a higher chance of paying up because of the low price. I mean back-up and cleaning the entire computer or buying a new computer would require a higher payment.

This affected me directly for the first time yesterday as our shipping contractor could not arrange transport of our products. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/fedex-says-cyberattack-disrupts-tnt-s-worldwide-operations  ..... it seems a few companies have been hit in Australia over the last couple of days.

it pisses me off that the whole company gets affected because some noob clicks an email link, secondly it pisses me off because these continued cyber attacks + future more sophisticated ones to come are giving bitcoin an increasingly worse reputation. As it is uninformed people currently associate bitcoin with criminals, which unfortunately keep getting headlines in the news..... try and search for a bitcoin good news story in the MSM!!.

silk road, hackers, pedos, guns, drugs etc etc.... Thankfully the power of bitcoin is greater than these shitty stories, but I wonder how long it can keep on sustaining such bad press?

Ransomware has been around before bitcoin and typically will infect your computer from random websites, I've seen people getting randomware asking for as low as $50 paid in paysafecards and other forms of payment cards. The key to these viruses is to infect hundreds of thousands of computers rather than a select few and asking for huge amounts.

By the way, this attack occurred quit a long time ago. There are other threads addressing the same question that you asked. Just use the search bar on the top-right corner of the page.

As to answer your question, I don't think Bitcoin would be banned or made illegal, but agencies would keep a close eye on Bitcoin from now on. Bitcoin's pseudo-anonymity allows the criminals to escape unscathed as no one can track them. It is not traceable as no one knows who the address belongs to. Plus even if they do ban Bitcoin such criminals have other altcoins such as Monero which is 100% anonymous to rely on.

Bitcoin is not causing deaths like the murders that occur every day in the US because of its gun laws. I am quite sure that everyone would agree that murders are worse than cyber-thefts. If they do not ban guns, then why would they ban Bitcoin?

I saw this topic on NHK world (Japan's public broadcaster) yesterday, they were talking about this issue since Japan has recognized bitcoin as a legal payment method, I didn't see they the Japanese were worried about bitcoin and this issue instead of worrying about bitcoin, handling and protection is needed or educating people to against the virus. it is clear that Bitcoin is only a currency or payment system, not a criminal tool that the government thinks need to be illegalized. In fact, bitcoin is better for against criminal activity and I think the government especially those who have recognized it as legal payment system already knew it.

As I've said this in other threads, I'm going to be repeating my point when it comes to this entire ransomware issue. The thing is, people are going to be using any sort of currency which is going to be easy to extract money from. I know in the past when my sisters computer was hacked, I know she was instructed (by the hackers ransomware program) to pay in something called Greendot Money Pak, which is a untraceable card which is purchased with cash which can be used to withdrawl money from. When I went to look it up, I saw tons and tons of hackers were abusing this card to try to pull this off. So this issue may be with Bitcoin, but there are probably tons of others which are easier for people to do it on

That's true, people prefer the easiest accessible currency. Right now considering the entire currency network bitcoin has got the highest value as well it's can be easily transacted without much of the traces left behind. Just because of this cyber attackers and other hackers ask ransom in terms of bitcoin.

Not directly the biggest issue would be increasing the KYC/AML requirements on exchanges at the point of conversion and possibly limiting or closing down as many individual bitcoin sellers as possible. Kind of like making a banking system and removing barter transactions as much as possible.

Simple is that Bitcoin is anonymous currency. In anonymous currency no one can trace the address of a user that's why hacker are using bitcoin instead bank or other address which can be traced. So don't blame bitcoin that it is just a feature of bitcoin. Bitcoin is a global ranked cryto currency which has created his image to the world 5 out 5.

Could it be that this virus has several objectives. One of which is to discredit bitcoin. Now the government starts talking about strengthening of struggle against bitcoin as a threat to such crimes. Remember what happened after September 11.

That's what I was wondering. Back in the day when 1 bitcoin was $300 it made sense but now that they're $2500 it seems like such an arbitrary amount. If you hack something like a hospital or government agency you can ask more it seems but if it's some ma and pa store they seem to ask for $300 in bitcoins. It's got to be the equilibrium.

These cyber attacks or hacking attempts are bad things for sure, but they really serve for the advertisement and promotion of bitcoin and blockchain, I think. More people see bitcoin, more demand happens.