Bitcoin and the Ransomware problem?

[dfox101]

Possibly there's no way to resolve this, or at least no good ways. One possibility is to have a centralized place, where it has bitcoin's checkpoint private key, and somehow exclude that particular tx from being used. That is, its tx output can not be spent. This will require significant changes in the bitcoin code though.

[Decoded]

Oh my god, the sun can burn your retinas, but the sun isn't a weapon.
Paper can give you cuts, but it's not a weapon.
The internet allows cyberweapons to exist, but the internet isn't a weapon.

Some criminals like bitcoin, so what? It's a scam?

[coinmachina]

Yeah, this really isn't a Bitcoin problem.

Just don't install ransomware and if you have really important data you have to have a backup - not just because of ransomware, loss of data is always possible.

[divyam_94]

As the growing popularity of bitcoin it is very hard to control the ransomeware problem because therr are soo many people who want quick money doesn't matter how they will get it? As bitcoin has an opensource connection archietecture & also it is publicly design therefore the problem are arised. As bitcoin is a crytocurrency then the authority they provided to the user......the user will have there private key to encrypt or decrypt the connection.....so there have to be more amedments that have to be done on bitcoin.

[Cereberus]

First of all is not a bitcoin problem.

Second, if you really are worried about your bitcoins, I think anyone here living in developed western countries can afford to buy a ledger cheap hardware wallet, this way the Ransomware cannot do anything to you if you don't have other important data in your PC. Just make a format and start with all your bitcoins in place again thanks to the hardware wallet.

As others have already said. It is very much recommended to back up all your data, including bitcoin wallet.dat if you have any.
Also if you have electrum wallet and have safeguarded the seed in few other places rather than your PC you can restore from the seed after you reformat your HDD.

Still ransomware is a very nasty thing.

[GMPoison]

First of all is not a bitcoin problem.

Second, if you really are worried about your bitcoins, I think anyone here living in developed western countries can afford to buy a ledger cheap hardware wallet, this way the Ransomware cannot do anything to you if you don't have other important data in your PC. Just make a format and start with all your bitcoins in place again thanks to the hardware wallet.

As others have already said. It is very much recommended to back up all your data, including bitcoin wallet.dat if you have any.
Also if you have electrum wallet and have safeguarded the seed in few other places rather than your PC you can restore from the seed after you reformat your HDD.

Still ransomware is a very nasty thing.

Exactly. Offline wallet = no possibility of ransomware.

[DuddlyDoRight]

Most ransomware is installed from things you willingly download and install.. The people behind them aren't intelligent enough to do something like a Chrome sandbox escape..


Yeah ransomware has nothing to do with bitcoin.. More like stupid users and the anti-virus industry ran by people not much smarter.. The "attacks" are mostly basic social engineering and primitive malware that just keeps private keys on a server with HWID.. Most I've seen were even very short .NET programs..