Hm... I figure the risk isn't all that high unless someone either detects your bitcoin address format or knows you have enough coins to be worth stealing and manually targets you. I'd say just stay up2date about your printer's firmware and possible news concerning it.

But I'm really not well-informed about this, just thought I might bring up the topic. Most likely, the chaotic nature of everything will prevent hacks from causing much harm in most cases, since viruses don't really know what to look for.

Anyways, bottom line: check that printer firmware is up to date, especially on HP network printers, very especially if it has not been patched since the hacking party began in November or whenever it was.


I'd not be so certain about that. We know they can be infected using a rigged document, so outputting the data from the infected printer would be the problem. But USB-device-to-computer hasn't exactly been mankind's safest channel in the past, I think on WinXP one can still claim to be/have a HDD on USB and then insert malware via some rigged Autorun, unless that has been properly disabled. A rigged printer can claim to be an USB hub and emulate whatever insane structure of devices!

Hardware that executes arbitrary low-level assemblies is evil. Patch the printers, stop that from happening, or else people will find ways to abuse it eventually.

Tee hee hee.

I doubt the conference would end up in Munich this time, but maybe we could plan a Munich minting cut party. Plenty of time to think about this, and maybe a good topic for the next Munich meetup.

I'm also in favor of Berlin, I have quite a few people I could visit there anyways.

Shuai has a point. Also, you can't count exchange volume as trade volume, trading is indeed still fairly small.

But then again, it's pointless to try and stop speculation. We need these hiccups and rallies to build a financial foundation for larger-scale trade. 8M @ 2 USD is a little small to provide the kind of market a business trader from and to China is likely to need.

Bottom line: live with the fluctuations for a bit longer, and don't give up even if you lose the majority of funds at some point. Every day this goes on is one day less until we reach stability. And don't forget that swings can go both ways, volatility is both a risk to lose money and a chance to win some. Don't put in too much and you'll likely be fine.

Ah, Casascius, that's good to hear. Still might not hurt to check whether the printer is capable of remembering stuff -- probably best to not connect it to the net again unless this can be ruled out.

I'm astonished that HP printers were not using signed firmware updates, or at least have a security switch for flashing it! That's not a question of adding a feature, that's an unacceptable blunder in terms of security! It never ceases to amaze me how little companies care for security.

What's worse, some documents were able to auto-flash a printer they're printed on. That way, hackers are able to infect perfectly firewalled printers. Insanity!

No FUD please; is there a problem or not? OP_EVAL itself never made much sense to me anyways, so please only spread panic if a targeted feature gets lost.

Right now, we mostly need some kind of multisig. From all I understand, most usage cases need either "2 of 2" or "2 of 3" signatures. If the new solution delivers that, I'm content for the time being.

We need the security of multiple keys and trust contracts... I mostly care about the latter. I might need a transaction "we both pay some amount, and we only get it back if both sides agree they still like each other".

The topic of paper wallets came up a lot recently, so I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware there has been a major hacking method disclosed for massive amounts of HP printers.

http://www.cccblog.org/2011/11/29/millions-of-printers-open-to-hack-attack/

I don't have the sources, but the CCC did a talk about it somewhere, use Google if you haven't heard yet. Basically, if you have one of the endangered printers with re-writable firmware restoration memory, either figure out how to check it or destroy it.

Needless to say, this goes for Casascius especially. Do you use an HP printer, and if so, can you perform checks on the memory banks involved? From what I know, there are sometimes two of them, both idiotically unprotected: the active firmware and the factory restoration memory.

Ah, okay. Sending 6 BTC. The app crashed on first start attempt when I tried to send the coins, so I only tipped 1 BTC on top. Expensive crash.

And if I sell instead of short-selling, will still someone take my money?

Nice crystal ball. I'll stick to a mixed strategy though, we've had "Bitcoin will rise forevaaa" before.

I think it's a little extreme, then again we're already above 5.43.

Sorry in advance for the necropost. It took ages until this got settled.

My little 20 BTC bounty is being paid now, I sent 15 to BCCAPI and will send at least the remaining 5 to BitcoinSpinner when I find a donation address.


The bounty was obviously not intended for "lol I meet the nonexistent specification when there is good weather" crapware. I need software that I can actually use to introduce people to Bitcoin. The kinds of errors, crashes and broken designs (Backup?!) the first Android clients produced were unacceptable. The Schildbach wallet has failed me on many occasions, and did destroy money on a newcomer's phone. I needed Nandroid backups to get coins back multiple times, those with locked-down phones were not so lucky.

BitcoinSpinner using BCCAPI was the first project that delivered and worked reliably enough to be used, so I can announce it as my personal winner. Strange as it is in terms of block chain management, it does what is asked of it.

That said, I encourage everyone to join in and support whichever client they prefer. A few BTC does not seem much, but if a lot of people donate, it adds up and supports good software and thus Bitcoin.

BitcoinSpinner (BCCAPI) works for me, so I have the ancient 20 BTC Android bounty to pay. The client program crashes frequently, and takes long to initialize at times, but it serves its purpose and I've not had any serious issues.

That said, 15 BTC are going to BCCAPI. It's funny the donation address is not shown as QR code on the page, I had to mail it to myself and paste it into BitcoinSpinner.

That means I should send at least 5 BTC to the BitcoinSpinner developers, but I didn't find a donation address. Do they have one?

It's a strange notion to use words like "should" and "artificial" on a market controlled by a fairly diverse set of humans.

We have people in here who might move the price just because they feel the Euro is reaching critical instability. We may have people who made wild assumptions about Christmas or New Year's, for money spending or tax reactions respectively. There are miners, who might have sold with the intention of buying back later when the bust happened.

The Bitcoin goods market is small and plays little role for price right now. And the model of every user running a full node all the time is known to be outdated anyways. I couldn't really tell just what the graph of unique IPs measures, well, other than unique IPs running a Bitcoin Node.


YES! Multisig! YYEEEEESSSSSS! Thank you very much for informing me, I missed out on the news. That feature may be essential for a project I'm working on. Hopefully it will find its way into the lightweight clients ASAP.

That feature is useful for much more than just securing against theft.

Hey, this looks cool. Looks like Mtgoxlive has a serious competitor.

Nice interface! The mouse wheel trick is neat, too.

I dunno what you're on about, it's early afternoon, perfect timing for a rally.

If I watched the ticker correctly, the EUR movement was a bit early, which would make sense. I could be wrong though -- and many Europeans trade in USD these days, for obvious reasons.

I'm not quite accustomed to the terminology, but using the term "summer solstice" at the equator is not very reasonable for the winter solstice of the northern hemisphere. That just assumes the northern view more important, and raises the question where to place the border between the two approaches.

The equator has a six-month cycle in terms of solar power, just the direction (North vs South) is different every half year. I don't see how defining "summer" and "winter" would have a lot of meaning to the people there. From what I can remember, many just assume northern hemisphere terminology though, since that's what the majority of tourists uses -- and those are the people who like thinking in "summer and winter" year cycles instead of rain periods etc.

PS: yay highjacking of threads.

Am I the only one thinking that this thread, apart from being a typographical catastrophe, doesn't make a lot of sense?

Bitcoin is a medium of exchange like any other, just a bit better. People will pay BTC if something they want is offered. This can be a piece of art, software, information, goods and services, anything nice or useful. So the question of what I would want has thousands of answers; the interesting thing to ask is what can you offer?

I don't see what is so confusing about this.

Can't I be greedy although I understand the utility of Bitcoin?

@Topic: I see a decicive point for the future of Bitcoin. The sentiments now, whether the community can return to growth, they tell a lot about what the future holds. Will public interest stop dropping, is development keeping up even after everything? This is the great decision happening. And it's not looking all that bad. Hell yeah, long live Bitcoin!

I said this elsewhere, but let me make it explicit:

isn't it embarassing to display unawareness that we're living on a round planet, and that global communities have to define their time suitably for this fact?

If I were to make a mistake like this -- I doubt it, but I can't blame anyone, everybody makes mistakes -- I'd try to make sure nobody noticed. This show here, to try and get just 5 BTC? What did you expect old_engineer to do, count your vote in both UTC and your local time?

There is no reasonable solution other than assuming UTC. Sorry if you're new to global communities, but such are the rules, and thinking about it just a moment makes it clear that the rules have to be that way, or else things become extremely annoying.

LOL I almost predicted this kind of trouble in the betting thread before the one in question, when I pointed out the OP was using non-UTC time/date.

That said, assuming non-UTC time is nonsense. The joint should be ashamed of making a mistake like this, flaming the board instead doesn't make this look any better.

The winner is obviously the one who guessed right in UTC, unless the time zone was explicitly added in the original post. This is not a matter of opinion, or who started the post, or anything else. If in doubt, UTC is to be assumed, period.

LOL ... illegal inventors! That's a new idea, let's make inventions illegal! Better run and hide once you noticed you've had an idea!

On one hand, it's an insult, but on the other media stupidity is increasingly amusing.