Equation Group - Cyber Weapons Auction

[Deorge Chesterton]

Alright, who's the lurker from VICE

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/someone-rickrolled-the-bitcoin-auction-for-nsa-exploits



On 8/18/2016 01:53, Georgi Guninski wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 04:52:09PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 09:17:09AM +0300, Georgi Guninski wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:11:11AM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
>>>> http://pastebin.com/NDTU5kJQ
>>> The auction live on air:
>>> https://blockchain.info/address/19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr6VitWK
>> :D
>>
>> Either way, fun to watch :)
> Much better than the Olympics ;)
>
> The bitcoin addresses look somewhat weird to me.
> IIRC they are formed from some crypto stuff of the user and the user
> has _some_ control of it at least via bruteforce.
> I suspect the user can't chose the address directly.
>
> Here are the addresses in the last transactions, spaces added by me:
>
> 1 never 9kNNkr27UseZSHnaEHg1z8v3Mbb
> 1 gonna V3MFNjymS4RGvUbHACstiS8aSYz
> 1 give GEk184Gwep2KT4UBPTcE9oqWzCVR
> 1 you KBMLEohsexdZtkvnTzHnc4iU7Ffty
> 1 up AbpBEWQ467QNT7i4vBMVPzSfQ3sqoQ
> 1 never 9kNNkr27UseZSHnaEHg1z8v3Mbb
> 1 gonna V3MFNjymS4RGvUbHACstiS8aSYz
> 1 1et AyypstpXLQpTgoYmYzT8M2foBSBe1
> 1 you KBMLEohsexdZtkvnTzHnc4iU7Ffty
> 1 down AsBbRQcBfUj8rgQomqhRsNFf1jMo
> ...skip some...
> 1 nice C9Xz1rBLvwcphRUVU4GEfaVzvTwa
>
> Reading downwards, this makes sense in English in _consecutive
> transactions_ (except the last).
>
> If the addresses were random, the probability of this happening
> appears very low IMHO, what does math say?
>
> Is this known bitcoin joke/weak steganography?