Topic: What happened in early December? (blockchain.info) (Read 1148 times)

What happened
I do not know the sepcifics but there was some disagreement between Roger and a customer of bitcoinstore.com. The customer claimed not to own a particular bitcoin address that a incorrect amount had been refunded to. Roger used his access to the blockchain.info admin panel to lookup the information on a wallet which held that bitcoin address. This email address associated with the wallet and the email address of the customer matched.

Why is even possible?
Wallet are stored fully encrypted, so they appear as random text to us. However when notifications are enabled the client extracts the public keys from a wallet and asks blockchain.info to subscribe to those addresses. The ability too lookup a wallet using this information was added so that when newbies come to us and say "I just created a bitcoin wallet, but forgot to record the wallet identifier how can get I get my money back?" we can ask for their bitcoin address or ip and and are normally able to recover the identifier.

Screenshot of Admin Panel:



Why does Roger have access to the blockchain admin panel
He owns a minority stake in the company and helps with support. His funding has been tremendously helpful in allowing me to work on the Site full time, buy new servers, security hardware and fund free features.

Who else has access to this information?
Me, Roger and a customer support agent.

What has been changed

• Roger and the support agent's access to this information has been revoked.
• Bitcoin addresses stored for notification purposes have been deleted. Addresses are now stored as a SHA 256 hash of the address, which removes the ability to lookup a wallet by bitcoin address.
• The secret phrase is now no longer shown to any admins

What other information could be used to identify a wallet
We store the ip address a wallet was created with and the ip address a wallet was last updated with.

A wallet can be looked up by SMS number or email if that information has been added in [Account Settings].

Can blockchain.info access funds the funds in my blockchain wallet?
No, the information available gives only enough information to prove the user may own a wallet with that address. He could not have accesses the wallet, even if he had wanted to. No other individuals have access to the blockchain.info servers or code apart from me.

It was https://www.nzbsrus.com/

You can see piuks post here (he has deleted it):
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gBSmj1ezLioJ:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php%3Ftopic%3D130371.0+&cd=1&hl=no&ct=clnk&gl=no

Bitcoin-Central - one of many exchanges that allow users to swap digital cash - got the green light on Thursday to partner with French bank bank Crédit Mutuel and payment service company Aqoba.

That means it joins the likes of PayPal in becoming a registered payment services provider (PSP). The new bank has an international bank ID, will be able to issue debit cards and transfer money from traditional banks to its customers' Bitcoin accounts and vice versa.

Bitcoin-Central - one of many exchanges that allow users to swap digital cash - got the green light on Thursday to partner with French bank bank Crédit Mutuel and payment service company Aqoba.

That means it joins the likes of PayPal in becoming a registered payment services provider (PSP). The new bank has an international bank ID, will be able to issue debit cards and transfer money from traditional banks to its customers' Bitcoin accounts and vice versa.

Was that Wordpress?  4chan?  Something else?

Blockchain.info was referred by a site that was switching to payments in bitcoins. I don't remember the site, but it was posted in this forum some days ago.

Buy, buy, buy