Security News

The United States this week announced that it seized $1 billion worth of Bitcoin stolen by an individual from the Silk Road marketplace over half a decade ago. Earlier this year, agents of the IRS CI were able to identify 54 previously undetected Bitcoin transactions associated with Silk Road, representing Bitcoin that was allegedly stolen from Silk Road in or about 2012 and 2013.

The Bitcoin wallet had links to hacker groups and had seen its balance drop from almost $1 billion in cryptocurrency to nothing overnight. Bitcoin address linked to Silk Road. The funds in Bitcoin wallet 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx have been found to be associated with Silk Road. Silk Road is remembered as one of the most notorious darknet marketplaces that had been shut down in October 2013.

A password-protected Bitcoin wallet with almost $1 billion in cryptocurrency has just been emptied out. "UNBELIEVABLE - Someone was able to crack the password of the Bitcoin wallet I reported on only a short time ago and spend the $1,000,000,000 that was inside it!".

The US Department of Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network today announced the first-ever penalty against a Helix and Coin Ninja cryptocurrency mixing services. FinCEN assessed a $60 million civil money penalty against Larry Dean Harmon, the founder and operator of the Helix and Coin Ninja cryptocurrency tumblers, for violating the Bank Secrecy Act and its regulations while operating the two services as unregistered money services businesses.

American financial regulators in New York have demanded Twitter be subject to harsher rules following the July hacks of prominent users' accounts - as CEO Jack Dorsey furiously backpedals after his website censored a news article from a US newspaper. The New York State Department of Financial Services demanded that Twitter be subject to more "Cybersecurity protections", controlled and overseen, naturally, by itself.

The Tor Project has confirmed someone, or some group, is in control of a large number of Bitcoin-snaffling exit nodes in its anonymizing network, and it's battling to boot them off. One observer reckons more than 23 per cent of the entire Tor network's exit capacity was under the command of one miscreant, or one group of miscreants, at one point in May, with the end goal being the theft of people's cryptocurrency.

A judge in Paris has ordered a French trial for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian suspected of money laundering on the bitcoin exchange BTC-e, also wanted by Washington and Moscow, his lawyer and other sources told AFP. Vinnik was extradited to France in January from Greece, where he had been arrested on an American warrant in 2017. Vinnik allegedly operated the BTC-e exchange until his arrest at the northern Greek tourist resort of Halkidiki, which set off a three-way extradition tussle between the United States, France and Russia.

A Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin, authorities said Friday. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media company's employees into giving them access.

Paris prosecutors asked investigating judges on Wednesday to order a criminal trial for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian suspected of money laundering on the bitcoin exchange BTC-e, and who is also wanted by Washington and Moscow. They have also sought an order for Vinnik's continued detention since his extradition in January from Greece, where he was arrested on an American warrant in 2017, the prosecutor's office told AFP. Vinnik, 40, operated the BTC-e exchange until his arrest at the northern Greek tourist resort of Halkidiki, which set off a three-way extradition tussle between the United States, France and Russia.

Twitter has said that around 130 accounts were targeted by miscreants this week as high-profile individuals and businesses had their accounts hijacked to promote a Bitcoin scam. The estimate comes days after the social media biz admitted the blitz - which snared the accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Uber and former President Barack Obama - was the result of "Coordinated social engineering".