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Friday, June 17, 2011

New Trojan Target’s Bitcoins

By: Kareem 

The security company Symantec is warning user’s of the somewhat popular Bitcoin virtual currency that their ‘virtual wallets’ might be under attack.

For those of you who might not know, bit coin is a Peer to Peer virtual currency that’s supposed to be more secure than making a ‘traditional’ online purchase using a credit card or checking account. Users are given what’s known as digital wallets where they store all their virtual money. Users can buy as many Bitcoins as they want and then use them for various transactions amongst others who have opted in to the service.

It would seem however, that the service isn’t entirely secure (and honestly is anything on the internet?) as hackers have already compromised some users accounts using a Trojan virus. The Trojan is called infoseaker.Coinbit and according to reports, locates your Bitcoin wallet, steals all the necessary data, and then dumps the file via FTP to the hackers servers. The reports say that there has already been a theft of 25,000 Bitcoins. The Bitcoins are valued at $23.50 which makes the theft worth about $500,000. Not exactly peanuts.

So if you use Bitcoins make sure you encrypt your wallet and that you make a very very difficult password as the attack is using brute-force to guess the passwords. If yours is too difficult there is a good chance whoever is doing this will not want to waste the time and move on to another, easier target.

Related Stuffs:

Source: International Business Times

Virtual Navigator: A Real “Virtual Currency” Emerges: Could BitCoins Threaten “Real” Currencies?

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