I hadn't seen this thread until now, but I also came to the same conclusion.
Selling 'key cracking' tools to idiots is a common scam, I'm not sure if this one is the same as prior parties who have pulled it-- but it's more sophisticated at least in the sense that the scammer implemented a fairly mathematically complex (but actually useless) attack and then was deceptively promoting it and using sock accounts to make it sound useful. To me this sounds like someone with a bit of genuine expertise looking to monetize their tinkering and who has rationalized defrauding people because the victims are would-be thieves. ... some of the prior accounts that were doing this didn't seem that capable, but it may be that they spent some time learning.
In addition to the ones mentioned by PrimeNumber7, off the topic of my head other accounts that have engaged in this kind of thing are Evil-Knievel and rico666. ... but there have been a bunch of other ones and making a complete list would be hard because many just ended up with nuked accounts.
At times I've been a little less aggressive at squashing these scammers specifically because their victims are also crooks-- and usually they're just selling something useless. Though sometimes they take the opportunity to distribute malware which I think is less justifiable even if the victims are crooks. These threads also create FUD as collateral damage (accusations that Bitcoin isn't secure), spam up the forum, and attract even more idiotic would-be-thieves. ... all of which are not cool even though I'm willing to admit that thieves robbing thieves is not my biggest concern.
In any case, I posted in the threads calling out and explaining the scam. Then shortly after that I saw there was a report with the same conclusions I had by another established forum member. Comforted by the fact that it wasn't just me, I nuked the newer newbie account that was purely promoting it which caused the forum software to tell me that it was a sock account of the first-- as expected. I haven't killed the initial scammer's account because it serves an example to others, and I think now has anti-fud effects: since people have seen these threads (and similar posted elsewhere) the rumors will continue to circulate, and with the thread left up people can link to the debunking at the end of it.
I did, however, nominate the account for a flag:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;flag=2879The amazing thing is there are probably still people who fall for that. It's like selling the goose with the golden eggs.
I had an idea that maybe the victims are people who have bitcoin burning a hole in their pocket because they successfully ripped someone off already, e.g. through cracking a brainwallet or social engineering. Stolen coins are dangerous to trade, probably the safest thing you can spend them on is more coin stealing tools. Someone who had some initial success in ripping people off may be emboldened to go for a bigger score.
This latest thread had an interesting elaboration because the cracking tool required a large number of signatures which someone might rationalize as making the attack harder to apply and less valuable to the author. ... then buy it with dreams of social engineering a target into making additional signatures.
