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Uncategorized Tuesday, August 2nd 2011 at 12:03 pm

Bitcoin Mining Botnet Controlled via Twitter

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As we all know, Bitcoin is basically fake money that people can automatically generate by leaving a computer on. Sure, to make significant progress, one would need a fairly powerful rig, but Bitcoins are still able to be generated out of nothing — mined by forcing the computer to complete complex mathematical problems in order to prevent the sudden influx of billions of Bitcoins. The more computational power directed toward solving the mathematical problems, the quicker Bitcoins can be generated. Not everyone can afford to buy a bunch of computers and set them up to mine Bitcoins, so taking after spam email botnets, Bitcoin miners have attempted to compromise other people’s computers in order to gain their computational power to put toward Bitcoin mining. Instead of some low-key controller directing the compromised computers behind the scenes, F-Secure found one Bitcoin botnet being controlled over Twitter.

A generator, which creates the bots, sets a Twitter account to be the one that can be used to control the Bitcoin mining botnet. F-Secure points out that they detect bots created with this generator as Trojan.Generic.KD.

Whether or not one supports nefarious activities like compromising unsuspecting computers and forcing them to do math (a heinous crime) in order to generate fake money, one must wonder why someone decided to control their illegal botnet through a third party platform that has the power to shut down the controller without much of a fight.

(via Hacker News)

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  • Mike Pants

    Fake money? It’s a currency whose value is backed by the faith of those who spend it, and it can be exchanged for goods. That makes it real money.

  • matt

    Fake Money? What an idiot.

  • Kurt Padilla

    Despite the author’s opinion that bitcoins don’t count as real money, they do require money to procure, at least to extend that one must pay for the electricity for the computing power to mine them. Saying that bitcoins get created out of thin air is an oversimplification.

  • My_surface

    There is a thread on forum to rename “miner” to “auditor”, so it would better reflect the purpose of mining process, and prevent shallow people from jumping into conclusion. Miners doing the job of supporting the network by verifying transactions and receiving small amount of bitcoins as reward.

  • Steven Wagner

    “The more computational power directed toward solving the mathematical problems, the quicker Bitcoins can be generated.”  
    That statement is factually incorrect.

  • Anonymous

    Fake money?  A more accurate description would be “amature money”, mainly because it’s being serviced by amature exchanges and amature escrow services who keep losing wallets (Bitomat, MyBitCoin), or having their security compromised by hackers (MtGox).  The main problem with the present bitcoin implementation is that it is unforgiving of errors.  You screw up, your

    (or your customer’s)
    money is gone! Poof!  Perhaps there should be a handshaking type interlock when spending money.  The receiver needs to actively acknowledge/accept receipt before the nework recognises the transfer.

    By the way, mining is more than just makework to meter bitcoin generation.  It’s a critical function required to secure/hash the block chain and prevent double spending.

  • Anonymous

    Fake money?  A more accurate description would be “amature money”, mainly because it’s being serviced by amature exchanges and amature escrow services who keep losing wallets (Bitomat, MyBitCoin), or having their security compromised by hackers (MtGox).  The main problem with the present bitcoin implementation is that it is unforgiving of errors.  You screw up, your

    (or your customer’s)
    money is gone! Poof!  Perhaps there should be a handshaking type interlock when spending money.  The receiver needs to actively acknowledge/accept receipt before the nework recognises the transfer.

    By the way, mining is more than just makework to meter bitcoin generation.  It’s a critical function required to secure/hash the block chain and prevent double spending.

  • http://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees Erik Voorhees

    Author says, “Bitcoins are still able to be generated out of nothing,” so for him to be consistent then I guess he thinks US Dollars (and every other national currency) are also “fake money?” At least one has a production limit.

  • Anonymous

    You probably wouldn’t consider +5 handwraps of pure good from Dungeons and Dragons Online as real money, but you can exchange them for goods and services too, including (though frowned upon) US dollars.

    I think it is best to limit “money” in this sense as actual legal tender that. You can pay people in massages, but that probably isn’t money.

  • Bymmas

    Bro ur an idiot. Learn how bitcoins work. Then study the history of currencies. Then load one bullet in a colt .45 and shoot urself cuz u make the world a dumber place. @james

  • Anonymous

    There are a lot of security issues to be worked out, but I believe that bitcoins are going to change the world. I recommend that everyone read up about them. If you are interested in buying/selling bitcoins, I personally use and recommend http://www.tradehill.com – they have lower fees than the main exchange (mtgox), and their website seems more professional IMHO.

    Also, I have a code that will get you 10% off trading fees there for life: TH-R1168

    Enjoy!     

  • Paul Maher

    HI James,
    Sorry someone mentioned you should kill yourself for writing a two line comment, strange world, and worrisome as people that senselessly violent are usually easily led by the nose. You are correct that the greatest limitation of bitcoins is the lack of govenment backing which means that a) you can’t pay taxes with it and b) in a contract dispute it is doubtful a court would enforce that bitcoins are legal tender for a private debt raising the possibility of being defrauded if dealing with hot headed frauds.   On the plus side bitcoins are not brought into existence as usrurious debt controlled by a small oligarchy.  A low tech precusursor to bit coins, the talley stick, which was backed by the English government had a good run of what 1,000 years.  Bitcoins have great promise and strike me as a superior approach to money than a debt based scheme charging interest (which isn’t in the money supply) or tribute for the priveldge of using that money.  As talley sticks evince, they are a number of workable alternatives to the current Royal Scam that are central banks   However, as with so many areas the problems really aren’t technological they more often relate back to whether people are willing to treat one another fairly, justly and peacefully. 

  • Billgates

    Methinks the author should have done their math

  • Mario Medina

    I agree, the author is an ignorant about bitcoins! Bitcoins are REAL digital money, with increasing value (now every BTC is about 10USD), and also the statement that “more computational power … quicker BTC can be generated” is incorrect. The net adjusts the generation of BTC to prevent that “quicker generation”.

  • Ggg

    gnurante !