A Darknet Vendor is Selling Millions Of Stolen Bitcoin User Accounts

A darknet vendor called “DoubleFlag” is selling user data stolen between 2011 and 2017 from 11 bitcoin forums for traders and miners, according to Hackread.com. The selling price is $400 (0.3817 BTC).

The heists include:

• About 12 million data units from 536,727 MerlinsMagicBitcoin.com accounts stolen in January 2017

• 514,409 from BitcoinTalk.org stolen in May 2015

• 568,357 stolen from BTC-E in October 2014

• 21,439 stolen from BTC4Free in January 2014

• 3,153 from Bitcoin.Lixter.com in September 2014

• 1,780 from BitLeak.net in March 2014

• 28,298 from DogeWallet.com in January 2014

• 61,011 from MtGox.com in June 2011

• 34,513 from BitsCircle.com, breach date unknown

• 10,855,376 from BitcoinSec in 2014

• 3,149 from TheBitcoinShop.pixub.com, breach date unknown

Extensive Personal Data For Sale

The accounts mostly contain an email address, date of birth, username, gender, personal text number, website URL, password and location. Some passwords have been decrypted. Some use an SHA-1 hash which can be decrypted easily since Google researchers recently broke the SHA-1 web security tool.

Individuals with accounts on these forums are advised to change their passwords immediately.

Not all forums are currently active.

The same seller has also offered 68 million hacked hashed passwords of Dropbox users. In addition, DoubleFlag previously sold millions of data units from U.S. Cellular customers and 1 billion from Chinese Internet sites.

DoubleFlag buyer ratings have been positive, indicating the data has been legitimate. When the May 2015 hack occurred, the stolen data was from unknown sources.

Also read: Hacked BitcoinTalk.org user data goes up for sale on dark web

May Heist Leaked To Notification Sites

“DoubleFlag” grabbed the data it stole in May before anyone else could. That leaked data was only accessible to data breaches notification sites like Hacked-DB and LeakedSource. LeakedSource was able to crack 30,389 passwords in total.

Hackers stole and sold 427 Million MySpace passwords last year on a dark web marketplace.

In May 2016, 33 million Twitter and 117 million LinkedIn login credentials were listed on a dark web marketplace for sale.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

BoJ: Blockchain Could Come Under Dark Cloud Amid DAO Hack

The Bank of Japan’s director has said that it’s important to constantly engage in taking measures against threats made to the blockchain or else it could impact the technology’s credibility and hinder its development.

Speaking at the third meeting of the FinTech Forum, Shigehiro Kuwabara, executive director of the Bank of Japan, presented a speech entitled ‘Distributed Ledger Technology and Designing “Trust”’ [PDF], which presented the banks view on blockchain and the issues of adopting it in the financial industry.

According to Kuwabara, establishing trust is an important facet in the financial industry compared to other fields. It is because of this that to make full use of the blockchain within the financial sector and how to design it as a trustworthy mechanism is going to be a challenge.

He proceeds by explaining three issues in designing a framework for blockchain to be trusted.

The first is ensuring ‘resiliency in emergency responses.’ He cites the DAO hack, which occurred last year, ‘in which an enormous amount of digital currency was drawn from a digital currency-based investment fund by hackers exploiting its system’s vulnerability.’

He adds that to recover the money, the operator proceeded to rollback the payment records, which wouldn’t normally occur.

And yet, as the cyberspace is exposed to threats such as hacking it’s necessary for the blockchain system to be resilient against potential threats that, as Kuwabara states, could ‘hinder the development of FinTech,’ as the credibility of the technology is put into question.

The second point is understanding the advantages and disadvantages of the blockchain.

There is no doubt that the technology is innovative and has exceeded expectations in its relatively short lifespan. However, Kuwabara believes that based on the level of the technology at its current stage, it has not yet to reach its full potential of replacing the current centralized system.

The DLT system, on one side, has strength in high fault resistance, but on the other side, there is also the challenge that it needs time to build consensus.

Thirdly, Kuwabara states that if the financial industry is to work with the blockchain it must have a deep understanding of the technology first.

At present, the core elements of the blockchain are developed by IT vendors and FinTech firms, outside of financial institution resources. But if the finance sector is to advance its services with the blockchain it needs to understand the technology.

Bank of Japan Initiatives

The Bank of Japan is committed to ensuring its economy and advancement with the blockchain.

Today, it was announced that the Japan’s central bank will ‘seriously consider’ digital currency despite saying at one stage that bitcoin doesn’t pose a threat to fiat money.

However, the central bank is continuing to watch the developments of blockchain knowing that in the future it may have to apply FinTechs to its operations.

Featured image from Shutterstock.