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Most property crime goes unpunished in the non-internet world. An anonymous someone walked off with my bike a few years ago, a crime unpunished to this day. Doe

by dmm 7y ago

Most property crime goes unpunished in the non-internet world. An anonymous someone walked off with my bike a few years ago, a crime unpunished to this day. Does this point to a fundamental flaw?

eli 7y ago
Yeah, I think it does point to a fundamental problem in our society. Check out your local Nextdoor and I think you’ll find people calling for very harsh punishment of bike thieves. The difference is how malleable the internet infrastructure is compared to the real world. Would ransomware have taken off like it has without bitcoin? Is there some technical change to bitcoin that could make it less attractive to bad guys?
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Do they still use Bitcoin in the face of alternatives like Monero?
  - et2o 7y ago
    Looks like it here. Monero is much harder to purchase in US
    - boring_twenties 7y ago
      How so? You can buy it on US exchanges like Kraken and Bittrex, until recently Poloniex.
- technion 7y ago
  The first ransomware payment I saw predated Bitcoin, and had the victims use a Western Union money order. It's definitely an inhibitor for the attacker. For a start, it took days for them to get payment. The current "our Onion site will detect the payment and release keys automatically" took a human workflow, which had to impact their scale. I have no doubt some sort of mule received the payment, but it's still much more traceable if overseas LE actually wanted to investigate. And managing that mule again had to hurt scale. The amount of ransomware we see today could never have happened without Bitcoin. Edit: that too started with an open RDP server. All these years and we're seeing the same vectors in this write up.
- pingyong 7y ago
  >The difference is how malleable the internet infrastructure is compared to the real world. Just put up cameras with facial recognition everywhere, require every citizen to have biometric IDs (face from multiple angles, fingerprints, DNA), make covering your face illegal and bam you catch like 99% of bike thieves. >Would ransomware have taken off like it has without bitcoin? Probably, yeah. Gift cards work well too for example (they're just not as convenient), and I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to transfer money too if you're willing to incur like 50% transaction losses. >Is there some technical change to bitcoin that could make it less attractive to bad guys? Bitcoin already tracks every transaction ever. You'd have to somehow prevent mixers from existing, but I'm not sure how that'd be possible.

by dmm 7y ago

Most property crime goes unpunished in the non-internet world. An anonymous someone walked off with my bike a few years ago, a crime unpunished to this day. Does this point to a fundamental flaw?

eli 7y ago

Yeah, I think it does point to a fundamental problem in our society. Check out your local Nextdoor and I think you’ll find people calling for very harsh punishment of bike thieves. The difference is how malleable the internet infrastructure is compared to the real world. Would ransomware have taken off like it has without bitcoin? Is there some technical change to bitcoin that could make it less attractive to bad guys?

paulryanrogers 7y ago
Do they still use Bitcoin in the face of alternatives like Monero?
- et2o 7y ago
  Looks like it here. Monero is much harder to purchase in US
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    How so? You can buy it on US exchanges like Kraken and Bittrex, until recently Poloniex.
technion 7y ago
The first ransomware payment I saw predated Bitcoin, and had the victims use a Western Union money order. It's definitely an inhibitor for the attacker. For a start, it took days for them to get payment. The current "our Onion site will detect the payment and release keys automatically" took a human workflow, which had to impact their scale. I have no doubt some sort of mule received the payment, but it's still much more traceable if overseas LE actually wanted to investigate. And managing that mule again had to hurt scale. The amount of ransomware we see today could never have happened without Bitcoin. Edit: that too started with an open RDP server. All these years and we're seeing the same vectors in this write up.
pingyong 7y ago
>The difference is how malleable the internet infrastructure is compared to the real world. Just put up cameras with facial recognition everywhere, require every citizen to have biometric IDs (face from multiple angles, fingerprints, DNA), make covering your face illegal and bam you catch like 99% of bike thieves. >Would ransomware have taken off like it has without bitcoin? Probably, yeah. Gift cards work well too for example (they're just not as convenient), and I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to transfer money too if you're willing to incur like 50% transaction losses. >Is there some technical change to bitcoin that could make it less attractive to bad guys? Bitcoin already tracks every transaction ever. You'd have to somehow prevent mixers from existing, but I'm not sure how that'd be possible.