On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 06:41:14AM -0500, John Newman wrote:
Sure, wallet theft is more akin to a heist and could net massive gains if you pick your target well. Is there any malware that actively looks for and steals wallets? I don't know, probably.
searching the web for bitcoin stealing malware returns a lot of results, some are from 2014.
Still, with a big enough bot net doing your mining and paying for the wattage i imagine it adds up. I wouldn't mind owning one :)
i am not sure mining on a botnet is the best way to profit from it. AFAIK, conventional CPUs are not efficient for mining, far worse from ASIC/FPGA?? or good video cards. probably the Internet Of Things will change this, allowing to install few ASIC miners to the rooted box.
It seems bitcoin is pretty resilient to other attacks on subtle features... although i'm not that well versed in the subject.
i am not familiar with bitcoin, but AFAIK it is something like "advanced socialism" by design. "consensus" of something like 50+% allows fucking up with coins and transactions and there already was a controversy about a "corporation of miners" abusing this unless i am mistaken.