Topic: Trojan targetting bitcoin! - page 2. (Read 3327 times)

virtual machine share the same network, it won't be 100% safe, i read that there are exploit to by pass virtual machine protection, strong malware/virus can do it

the point is to have a completely separate network

Trojan targets everything, Bank system, nuclear power station, companies, etc ,and it try to make money or for some politics reasons.

Bitcoin is growing, becoming a traget is also quite common.

Any malware that uses computers to mine bitcoins would be pointless nowadays due to ASICs. Such malware did once exist but those days are now long gone. The only exception is malware that secretly mines altcoins since many altcoins can still be mined on CPUs and GPUs. The article posted by the OP seems to be talking about bitcoin users specifically:

Hmm.. So are they targeting bitcoin users or just targeting random people and use their computer to mine bitcoins?

"In the past year" means from about early 2014 onwards - i.e. only a couple months after the November-December 2013 spike. Back then, the price of Bitcoin was much higher ($700's) and there were a lot more new people entering the community compared to today.


Someone else already mentioned inputs.io as an example of why it's not a good idea to store your coins on a third party exchange or wallet site and they are correct. There have been many other "hacked" online wallet services and exchanges in the past - the most famous being Mt. Gox which was trusted for many years. One of the first to be hacked was MyBitcoin which was a service that even Satoshi recommended (but only for small amounts). Recently, Bitstamp and Bter suffered major hacks too. I wouldn't feel safe having my coins stored on an exchange. For long term storage, offline or paper wallets are the best solution.


Even for someone with a botnet, it would be pointless trying to mine BTC using ordinary computers. The introduction of ASICs made the threat of botnet mining farms obsolete for Bitcoin. It would make much more sense for a botnet operator to silently mine a CPU or GPU mineable altcoin instead and then convert these coins to BTC via an exchange.


Electrum prompts for an (optional) password after installation so I'm not sure why Bitcoin Core doesn't. In fact, even the ability to encrypt the wallet in Bitcoin Core was a recent addition. Before late 2011, it was impossible to encrypt your wallet unless you used a third party tool. It wasn't until allinvain's 25,000 BTC hack (link) in the same year that prompted the devs to add encryption.

Lol it would actually be great, I havent heard a single company offering condoms for BTC, maybe it would be a good niche.

There is no need to dedicate a whole computer for that, you can much more easily create a virtual machine with all your wallets and rest of stuff u need to protect and store it on a usb drive.
Would make much more sence than having a separate computer just to hold your wallet on it.

cheers

as long as your btc are in a cold storage, malware/trojan cannot do anything

otherwise dedicate a network and a desktop exclusively to your bitcoin client, and don't surf or DL nothing on that machine, 100% safe, unless a real thief enter your house, but that's another story....

Condom companies should accept btc 

I have heard many people losing their bitcoins from their wallets due to Trojan attacks. I have McAfee antivirus installed on my PC and it keeps deleting the Trojan viruses but still I feel it's better to have paper wallets.

This is a good idea, surprized that option isn't already included in bitcoin core to be honest.

We could also do with an secure noob-friendly way of making paperwallets.

I think you meant soft copy, hard copy is usually something printed on paper and is not inside any electronic devices. Also, there is a risk of the device getting corrupted.

Electrum offline wallet for me.
The fact that it can be recovered from the seed is a big comfort.

I believe that each bitcoin core installation should include a prompt to backup the wallet on external media (CD, thumbdrive/USBstick, memory card, etc) with the option to encrypt with passphrase. This will assist users who are not tech savvy to at least have a protected hard copy elsewhere.

This is the best decision if you need to use windows use it strictly for wallets you trust and leave it offline between uses i do this without any anivirus lol, when you explore the web or need to download anything other than your wallets you have your linux system this is what i do and have never had any problem so far fingers crossed of course. 

I don't want my computer to be locked up like iOS one day just to have the advantage to shift the responsibility over my computer to some "goverment trusted" foreigners. If I don't want responsibility which is the downside of freedom, I'm better off with fiat in use with traditional banking.

Yeah I'm looking forward to the price coming down on hardware wallets like Trezor, I'll be sticking to my paper wallets in the meantime

Someone mentioned the possibility of hoarding coins in an exchange earlier, which is about the worst advice ever. If you want good security you have to be responsible for it yourself. No product alone will do it for you.

Or do both like I do and even when you have a Hardware wallet have a good one for big funds.

1:Encrypt
2:Middle security Hardwallet (ledger or HW1)
3:High security Hardwallet (trezor)
4:Long term cold storage (paper wallet or Note from secure PC)

Purely theoretical, all bitcoin clients that do not depend on hardware encrypted keys are susceptible to these kinds of attacks. Solutions like Trezor stop these types of attacks, but the workflow is more difficult than simply using a software wallet (and they're expensive).

Hopefully, things like bitcoin will be a driving force for TPM chips, small crypto chips embedded in your computer, that stop attacks like these.