I received this file via email. I suspect it is malware -- possibly a wallet-stealer. Did anyone else get this?

http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/12732912/file.html (Warning: probable malware)


The ecurrency part makes me think it's targeted to Bitcoin users.

Yeah, you were just caught in someone else's ban. Often when I ban a user, I ban all of the IPs they've used.

I removed some of the banned IPs for that ban.

I doubt it. Bitcoin doesn't hash anything secret.

All miners do this. SHA-256 works by hashing the first 64 bytes of data, mixing this hash into the next 64 bytes of data, hashing that, etc. The first 64 bytes of a block header doesn't change very often, so getwork returns a field called "midstate" which is the hash of the first 64 bytes, and then miners just need to compute the remaining hash from the midstate and data. Using the midstate speeds things up significantly.

SHA-256's way of hashing arbitrarily-sized data allows for trivial "extension attacks". Given only the hash of "password; command", an attacker can trivially produce the hash of "password; command; attacker'sArbitraryData" (ie. he can append any data he wants without knowing what he's appending to).

I agree, but since the forum doesn't yet support threading, it's necessary to enforce on-topicness to keep the forum usable.

Substantial off-topic replies are usually split.

In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software, the forum is selling ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page.

Ads this week will be allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation (no marquee or blinking). Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser. Ads will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Eight of the slots are for sale here.

The ad lasts 7 days starting from when I put it up.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Efficacy stats:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54182.0

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the max number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all eight slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 8 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 8 slots. If the two highest bids are 8 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 7 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.5.
- The bidding starts at 0.5.
- The auction end time is 22:00:00 on May 30, UTC. Countdown. (The end time may be extended -- see below.)
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the auction end time, then the auction will be extended by 30 minutes. If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the new end time, then the auction will be extended again, etc. The time will not extend beyond 6 hours total.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slot may be sold to someone else.

Current state:
Slots BTC Person
1 4 Goat
1 3.5 ultima
2 3 bitsforcoins.com
1 3 bitlotto
2 2.5 tosaki
1 2 Bzik

They don't need to talk to you. They can just download your key from a keyserver the first time and hope it's accurate. Or they can check to see if anyone they do already trust has signed your key.

How could it be made easier? I've thought about it in the past but I couldn't think of any major improvements that wouldn't also hurt security.

Current state:
Slots BTC Person
1 3.5 ultima
2 3 bitsforcoins.com
1 3 Goat
1 2.5 Goat
3 2 Bzik

Current state:
Slots BTC Person
1 3.5 ultima
2 3 bitsforcoins.com
1 3 Goat
1 2.5 Goat
1 1.5 mc_lovin
2 1 Coineer

You should call it Rapture.

The US government will never agree to those terms. And even if it did, you couldn't trust it not to break its promises later.

Current state:
Slots BTC Person
1 1.5 mc_lovin
1 1 Goat
4 1 Coineer
2 1 Bzik

Current state:
Slots BTC Person
1 1 Goat
4 1 Coineer
3 1 Bzik

Two days left.

Current state:
Slots BTC Person
1 1 Goat
4 1 Coineer

I'll fix it as soon as I can. The disk is getting overloaded, it seems.

I've heard that Convergence is no longer being actively developed.

I use the Certificate Patrol and Perspectives Firefox extensions. I've also disabled most of the CAs in Firefox, though Firefox's handling of invalid certificates is pretty bad, so I don't recommend doing this unless you're paranoid.

I'd probably only take public posts into account.

Forum ranking is based only on posts, which is a poor measure of trustworthiness.