My question is how the hacker KNEW the BitCoins were there? Was some other part of the system penetrated to identify users?
And again, my concern is less the BitCoins than the BitCoin mining operation. The BitCoin mining software uses a LOT of computer power for what we are told is a simple peer-to-peer cash system. Peer-to-peer file sharing does not require that kind of raw compute power. Neither does the level of digital signing the peer-to-peer cash system claims to use. There is a huge amount of computer power being expended on other unknown tasks. Some articles on just how BitCoins are awarded speak of "solving blocks", and therein lies my concern. As a part of the mining for BitCoins, a huge amount of computer power is being spent on cryptographic processing of these blocks, and nobody really knows for certain what is inside those blocks.
I am concerned that the BitCoin miner, along with passing BitCoins hither and yon, is actually a vast distributed code key-breaker. With enough raw computer power chained together in a few million BitCoin users, brute-force breaking of the keys of asymmetric encryption becomes achievable, even convenient. Great if the perps are reading Iran's government communications or congressional "Sexting" messages, but not so great if the target is banks, SSH transactions, https, utilities, your corporate server, and secured emails.
And just as BitCoin mining becomes widespread, all of a sudden, we are seeing hacking attacks against Sony, IMF, and other previously untouchable secure systems.
I do not think this is just coincidence.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/node/120392I have written him giving him the URL for the UFASOFT miner link, which also provides the souce code for linux. His site is well-traveled, and has significant traffic. So the publicity is there, but of the negative sort.
