[2017-02-12] Hal Finney’s Bitcointalk Password Changed After 4 Years Inactivity

[themerkle]

Hal Finney is a Computer Scientist who worked for the PGP corporation. He is known in the Bitcoin community for being the first user to receive a Bitcoin transaction – coming from Satoshi. Recently, Finney’s bitcointalk account’s password was changed which has some members concerned.

In October 2009 Hal Finney announced that he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), unfortunately he passed away five years later in August of 2014. Furthermore, he spent the last years of his life under constant extortion threats from anonymous callers demanding 1,000 Bitcoins in order to stop “swatting” him. That is when a criminal spoofs an anonymous call admitting to a heinous crime while pretending to be the victim, the goal is to have a SWAT unit show up to the victims house and essentially perform a raid.

Read More: https://themerkle.com/hal-finneys-password-changed/

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[TraderTimm]

Lets just run this through a thought experiment, shall we?

There seems to be no advantage to hacking Finney's account, unless there were some personal messages that contain some private information.

No one is going to take a post from the now-passed Finney as legitimate or credible.

Bitcointalk's security has been penetrated many times, so it may just be simple curiosity on the hackers behalf.

In any case, it doesn't seem like there's much to be gained by controlling a dead man's account - unless Hal used it (highly doubtful) as part of a two-factor scheme for something more valuable.

[Kprawn]

Lets just run this through a thought experiment, shall we?

There seems to be no advantage to hacking Finney's account, unless there were some personal messages that contain some private information.

No one is going to take a post from the now-passed Finney as legitimate or credible.

Bitcointalk's security has been penetrated many times, so it may just be simple curiosity on the hackers behalf.

In any case, it doesn't seem like there's much to be gained by controlling a dead man's account - unless Hal used it (highly doubtful) as part of a two-factor scheme for something more valuable.

It could be someone probing to see if Finney's personal messages contains any clues to the identity of Satoshi. We all know how much bitcoins

are being held by Satoshi, and this will be the ultimate treasure hunt for them. There are people out there {grave diggers} ...who will not think

twice about digging into Finney's private messages to get to Satoshi's coins. I respect the dead, and will not disrespect him, by doing that. 

[Papa Bear]

Many Bitcointalk accounts have been compromised and hashed passwords were cracked, especially those that didn’t bother to change the password after the hack – which was made very public. It comes to no surprise that Hal didn’t change his password between 2013 and 2016 so it is entirely possible that hacker was able to gain access to the account.

[Newmine]

I find it hard to believe that someone figured out Hal's password. Unless Hal left it to a family member, I am guessing an admin here accessed the account and changed the password.

[notthematrix]

Many Bitcointalk accounts have been compromised and hashed passwords were cracked, especially those that didn’t bother to change the password after the hack – which was made very public. It comes to no surprise that Hal didn’t change his password between 2013 and 2016 so it is entirely possible that hacker was able to gain access to the account.

If it was MD5 it can easaly be cracked...

[notthematrix]

I find it hard to believe that someone figured out Hal's password. Unless Hal left it to a family member, I am guessing an admin here accessed the account and changed the password.

you truly underastamate the power of a Videocard password cracker and MD5