[2015-03-27] Forbes: Bitcoin's Blockchain Offers Safe Haven For Malware

[pitham1]

Bitcoin's Blockchain Offers Safe Haven For Malware And Child Abuse, Warns Interpol

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/03/27/bitcoin-blockchain-pollution-a-criminal-opportunity/

The blockchain, the public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions, has all kinds of good uses outside of providing stability for the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, from decentralised data storage to super-flexible email. But it can also be put to malicious use. According to Interpol’s Christian Karam, speaking from the Black Hat Asia conference, it could be abused to store malware control mechanisms or provide access to illicit content such as child abuse images that would be extremely difficult to take down.

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[lyth0s]

This is really just a scare tactic to keep people away from bitcoin. There aren't enough bytes really for a full picture and you'd have to intentionally try to execute the bytes in the blockchain to MAYBE get a super small scrypt to run.....but who would run an equivalent of eval(); on it right? You'd be setting yourself up.

[Bit_Happy]

That is stinky FUD without much basis in the real world.
Forbes has run several great BTC articles over the years and it is a shame to see something that low quality published now.

[EternalWingsofGod]

It seems to be a contagion thing all the negative press is coming out at the same time
Although if I recall correctly we did have discussions about CP on the blockchain for quite a while on the forums, can't really say you can get malware on the blockchain though, just .... stupid virus ID codes...

[pitham1]

This report at least quotes Kaspersky. Forbes had presented it as an accepted fact.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113806/warning-kaspersky-alerts-users-of-malware-and-blockchain-abuse

Warning! Kaspersky Alerts Users of Malware and 'Blockchain Abuse'

Kaspersky Labs warns users of a possible exploit in cryptocurrency blockchains that would allow malicious actors to distribute malware or even images depicting child abuse.

The warning is the result of research of INTERPOL Cyber threat experts, a group that includes a Kaspersky employee.

They warn that the extra space provided in each transaction, intended for notes, messages and as a space to allow additional functions to be built on top of the blockchain, could in fact be used to spread malicious code or worse.

[Quantus]

Time for an update then. It shouldn't be difficult to block or shorten said "extra space" and thus limit or amount of code that can be added or even remove it completely.
Not like it's an essential feature Bitcoin can't function without. Most people aren't using it anyway.

Gavin Andersen wants to do the opposite and increase block size by 60 or even a 100 fold. Using the block chain to control botnets would be untraceable and cost almost nothing. As for CP on the block chain that already happened and will only be made worse by a Gavin bloat coin fork. The block chain is already growing to large and nodes are dropping like flies.

[Kprawn]

Well it could most probably be done, I have seen images of Nelson Mandela in the Blockchain :
http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html

So CP or other nasties can be hidden in there too... If there is enough space for the whole Satoshi white paper, there should be enough space for malicious Malware too.

[aigeezer]

I find the malware storage viewpoint to be absurdly unhelpful, although I do not dispute its underlying truth. The same arguments might be made about a stack of blank paper or the patterns formed by a number of stars in the sky when viewed from exactly the right perspective.

Any substantial string of bits can be turned into CP when passed through an appropriate hashing filter, and conversely any CP can be hashed into an image of Mother Teresa or whatever.

A reasonable solution in such cases will never be found in banning or regulating the medium of storage, imho - it's just makework and/or an excuse to meddle.


 

[EternalWingsofGod]

I find the malware storage viewpoint to be absurdly unhelpful, although I do not dispute its underlying truth. The same arguments might be made about a stack of blank paper or the patterns formed by a number of stars in the sky when viewed from exactly the right perspective.

Any substantial string of bits can be turned into CP when passed through an appropriate hashing filter, and conversely any CP can be hashed into an image of Mother Teresa or whatever.

A reasonable solution in such cases will never be found in banning or regulating the medium of storage, imho - it's just makework and/or an excuse to meddle.


 

If I recall though some messages would not be seen to standard users of the blockchain since they would be non-standard txts to send the data
But anyways your right it's more less an excuse to try to meddle with the system itself, can't really control or isolate any single txt without blocking every participant in the system or sieving every transaction to go through it.

[snarlpill]

That is stinky FUD without much basis in the real world.
Forbes has run several great BTC articles over the years and it is a shame to see something that low quality published now.

I agree 100% on both points. Unfortunately I believe we will see more & more of this type of baseless FUD news about Bitcoin hitting the mainstream media as BTC continues to grow. The sad thing is that the average, non-tech savvy person will probably just accept it as facts without bothering to even look into it.