$500,000 STOLEN IN BITCOIN HEIST

You may not have heard of BitCoin, but you’re probably going to start hearing about it a whole lot more often now that a major theft has taken place. The decentralized digital currency has gained prominence in geeky circles because of its privacy-protecting nature. Like the Dollar, Pound, Yen, or indeed any traditional currency, the market value of a BitCoin can fluctuate. Recently, BitCoin’s value had skyrocketed, up to nearly $30 US from $5 in a span of about a month.

That got investors interested in BitCoin, and where there’s high-profile investing going on you can bet there’ll be some spear phishing as well — especially in an online community which has gained a reputation for being frequented by malicious hackers and cybercriminals. It’s also no difficult task to locate possible targets, thanks to the availability of information like this list of wallets with balances of 20,000 coins or more. BitCoin Wallet information isn’t encrypted when stored on a user’s hard drive, so access — such as that provided by a successful phishing exploit — is all that’s required. Once the .DAT file has been retrieved, the deed is done and a criminal needs only to find willing buyers for his or her ill-gotten coinage.

Interestingly, because of the way BitCoin works we’re actually able to take a look at the theft of funds which shifted more than 25,000 BitCoins — valued at around $20 each at the time. Any personally identifiable information is hashed, however, so the perpetrator remains anonymous at this point — though the victim has come forward on BitCoin forums seeking help.