Bitcoin News From Around The Web

[jdebunt]

Original Silk Road Cannabis Buyer Arrested By German Police

In most cases, deep web buyers are only punished when they involve weapons or other tools to do harm to others. Large drug purchases are also frowned upon, yet 17 orders of between 1.5 and 7.4 gram of cannabis are not that extraordinary. It does not appear as if the arrest has anything to do with this user further distributing the marijuana either, yet he was fined over 3,000 EUR for his involvement.

http://themerkle.com/original-silk-road-cannabis-buyer-arrested-by-german-police/

[jdebunt]

Regulatory Sandbox Can Make Singapore Biggest Fintech Hub in Asia

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has taken notice of this growing need for Fintech regulation and issued a proposal for a sandboxed environment. If this paper is approved by the government, startups and Fintech firms can experiment with new technologies without having to worry about regulatory guidelines and safeguards.

http://fintechist.com/regulatory-sandbox-can-make-singapore-biggest-fintech-hub-asia/

[jdebunt]

Bitcoin Price Marches Towards US$600 As Trading Volume Holds Firm

Holding that Bitcoin price will largely depend on what Chinese traders plan to do over the next few days. The daily Bitcoin trading volume against the yuan is creeping up the ranks once again, and over 994,000 BTC changed hands yesterday. Today is looking unyielding as well, so far, with over 540,000 Bitcoin traded already.

http://themerkle.com/bitcoin-price-marches-towards-us600-as-trading-volume-holds-firm/

[jdebunt]

Poloniex Exchange Confirms Funds Are Safe Despite Outage

Poloniex is the largest altcoin exchange in the world today, as they continue to dominate nearly every alternative cryptocurrency trading market. Especially Ethereum and The DAO tokens are seeing a lot of daily trading volume on these platforms. But now that Poloniex is temporarily offline, a lot of traders are panicking and show concerns over their funds.

http://bitcoinist.net/poloniex-funds-are-safe-despite-outage/

[jdebunt]

Putting A Backdoor In Computer Chips During Manufacturing

The study – presented in the form of a technical paper – mentions how a single logic gate needs to be added to a chip ready for fabrication. Additionally, there is a stealthy process involved to trigger changes in the gate’s functionality before it will act in a malicious manner. While this sounds a lot of trouble for potentially little reward, this method is all but impossible to detect.

http://themerkle.com/putting-a-backdoor-in-computer-chips-during-manufacturing/

[jdebunt]

Even Mark Zuckerberg Uses The Same Password Several Times


This story once goes to show how password security should be taken much more serious, even by people such as Mark Zuckerberg. Using a short password with just letters or digits makes the hijacked job for assailants only easier. It is not overly difficult or inconvenient to create a secure password for every site.

http://themerkle.com/even-mark-zuckerberg-uses-the-same-password-several-times/

[jdebunt]

New Vanbex Group Partners Brings Virtual Reality To Blockchain Conference

Shanghai Blockchain is sponsoring this conference, and they provide the VR technology developed by Time Technologies. This particular VR company is an affiliated partner of Shanghai Blockchain, which makes the partnership with Vanbex Group even more valuable. Exciting times are ahead for cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiasts.

http://themerkle.com/new-vanbex-group-partners-brings-virtual-reality-to-blockchain-conference/

[jdebunt]

Ransomware Infections Set To Spike Due To Angler Bypassing EMET

Up until this point, many security experts felt that EMET was the most efficient ways to prevent Windows computers from being attacked or infected. Moreover, it has never been possible to bypass this layer of protection entirely. FireEye researchers discovered the new code in the Angler exploit kit on Monday, June 6.

http://bitcoinist.net/ransomware-spike-angler-bypassing-emet/

[jdebunt]

Poloniex Outage Does Not Disrupt Ethereum Price

Whenever one of the leading exchanging platforms for a cryptocurrency faces an outage the price is usually affected in a negative manner afterward. That doesn’t seem to be the case for Ethereum however, as the Poloniex outage did not rattle the Ether price by a significant margin. With the value still holding just above the US$14 mark, things are looking fairly good.

http://themerkle.com/poloniex-outage-does-not-disrupt-ethereum-price/

[jdebunt]

US Card Issuers Lost US$10.9bn in Revenue In 2015

There are two very harmful types of fraud, albeit they have not changed much over the years. Application fraud and account takeover remain two key areas where additional security precautions are needed. Spyware, malware, and phishing scams remain the driving factor for this type of fraud. Counterfeit cards, usually created due to skimming attempts, represent 16% of the fraud losses.

http://themerkle.com/us-card-issuers-lost-us10-9bn-in-revenue-in-2015/

[jdebunt]

Swirlds Addresses Blockchain Limitations With Hashgraph

Swirlds claims they can create the next generation of distributed consensus through their hashgraph platform. While still promoting fairness and distributed trust, it is also resilient to DDoS attacks. However, it does not require proof-of-work to achieve any of these goals, which makes it rather peculiar.The associated whitepaper does not mention specifically how the company delivers this technology

http://bitcoinist.net/swirlds-blockchain-limitations-hashgraph/

[jdebunt]

Huobi Loses Ground In Both USD and CNY Markets

This “competition” between Bitcoin exchanges has also lead to the increase of USD trading volume once again. Albeit the margin is minimal, 1,840 more Bitcoin were traded yesterday compared to two days ago. It is hard to say if this a sign of another surge in USD trading volume to come, though.

http://themerkle.com/huobi-loses-ground-in-both-usd-and-cny-markets/

[jdebunt]

HomeNewsDeep WebPrison Librarian Purchased Firearm and Cocaine From Deep Web
Prison Librarian Purchased Firearm and Cocaine From Deep Web

Despite pleas from the defense as to how these drugs were “purchased for a friend”, the judge did not agree with this argument. Instead, he found the defendant guilty of benefiting commercially from this drug trafficking. The librarian admitted to possessing drugs with intent to supply.

http://themerkle.com/prison-librarian-purchased-firearm-and-cocaine-from-deep-web/

[jdebunt]

White Hat Hacker Saved Uber From Login Bypass Exploit

What this vulnerability does exactly, is letting attackers bypass the system used for Uber employee authentication. Additionally, it would have been possible to compromise the company’s internal network which is hosted on Atlassian’s Confluence software. Bypassing this login would allow an attacker to access the Uber Newsroom, which is running on WordPress.

http://themerkle.com/white-hat-hacker-saved-uber-from-login-bypass-exploit/

[jdebunt]

Brief Bitcoin Price Dip Followed By Another Upward Trend


At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price has recovered to a US$575 price level. The price has been hovering around this value for the past few days, albeit a lot of people are wondering if we can get past the US$600 point shortly. It is certainly possible, but it will take a lot of volume to reach that threshold.

http://themerkle.com/brief-bitcoin-price-dip-followed-by-another-upward-trend/