Items tagged with cryptocurrency
Authorities in the U.S. have announced that they have been successful in breaking a ring of hackers who had been running a scam to hijack SIM cards and steal cryptocurrency from the victims of the crime. Court documents in the case allege that the group, known as "The Community," had stolen about $2.4 million in cryptocurrency. Six people from the hacking ring were named in court documents in the case. The indictment came from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, and it alleges that six people living around the U.S. and Ireland were part of The Community. The SIM hijacking scheme that the group pulled off involved them using bribery or trickery to convince mobile phone...
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The cryptocurrency market has taken a beating over the past year, but if there is a Rocky Balboa among the bunch, it is undoubtedly Bitcoin, the virtual currency that just will not stay down. In fact, Bitcoin saw a sudden increase in value on Tuesday, rising 15 percent to $4,800. That is the highest value Bitcoin has seen since November. At least one cryptocurrency exchange had Bitcoin trading even higher, at $5,000. As it stands at the time of this writing, Coinbase has it going for $4,745.62, which is up 14.73 percent (+$609.06) in the past 24 hours. If nothing else, this further underscores how volatile the cryptocurrency market has always been since it swung onto the mainstream radar. So,...
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The Bitcoin boom has generally gone bust, and as a result, we just don't hear as much about cryptocurrency as a major market mover as we used to. The value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies crashed last summer, leaving many investors hurting and lots of crypto mining rigs with expensive GPUs running idle and unused. The good news for gamers is that the crash of crypto meant graphics cards were finally available at reasonable prices. Further, a new report has been published today that throws more shade on the legitimacy of Bitcoin trading as a currency itself. The analysis was published by Bitwise this week and found that unregulated currency exchanges actually fake 95% of Bitcoin...
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Hold onto your wallet. Researchers at ESET have discovered the first known instance of a relatively new strain of cryptocurrency-stealing malware, called a "clipper", on the Google Play Store. They reported their findings to the Play Store's security team on February 1st, who quickly took down the offending application. The attack uses a remarkably simple trick to part users with their digital funds. Cryptocurrency values are assigned to a long, unique string of characters known as a wallet. In order to make a transaction, a sender typically needs to enter the recipient's wallet address in their app. This is similar to how you would put a real-world address on an envelope in order for it to be...
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Facebook might be joining the blockchain party in a potentially big way, by developing its very own cryptocurrency that would enable users to transfer money over WhatsApp, the cross-platform messaging service the company acquired in early 2014 for $19 billion. On the surface, blockchain and WhatsApp seem like a natural fit. The appeal of WhatsApp is that it utilizes end-to-end encryption and is viewed as a secured messaging platform. It's also available to the public at large and boasts over 1.5 billion monthly users, who collectively send 60 billion messages every day, according to data Mark Zuckerberg provided for the fourth quarter of 2017. Those figures are undoubtedly even higher today....
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Cryptocurrency has been a hot topic in 2018, and Google claims that “What is bitcoin?” was one of its top questions this year. A lot of people (and companies) jumped on the cryptocurrency train, including Razer. The company is now offering users store credit in exchange for cryptocurrency mining. But is this program too good to be true? Many argue that the Razer SoftMiner rewards program is misleading and exploitative. How does this rather confusing program work? Users are asked to download SoftMiner, a blockchain-based app that has been integrated into Razer’s software. The software is supposed to run silently in the background and draw upon a user’s idle GPU resources....
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HTC is accepting pre-orders for a new flagship phone, though there is a caveat. Users can only purchase the Exodus 1, as it's called with cryptocurrencies—specifically either Bitcoin or Ethereum, the two most popular blockchain currencies in existence. It is, for all intents and purposes, a blockchain phone and not a typical Android handset. That would not be evident at first glance of the specs. The Exodus 1 sports a 6-inch HD+ display with an 18:9 aspect ratio, and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and 6GB of RAM. It also features 128GB of onboard storage, dual 8-megapixel cameras on the front with "natural Bokeh," 12-megapixel and 16-megapixel cameras on the rear, and...
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At least for the time being, it looks like the mad rush to buy graphics cards for cryptocurrency mining and leave gamers with overpriced options is in the rear view mirror. That doesn't mean cryptocurrency mining doesn't still present an annoyance in some sectors, though. Security researchers warn that cryptocurrency malware is currently hiding in a fake Adobe Flash update that is making the rounds. Adobe Flash can't disappear fast enough. In the meantime, it continues to present security issues, sometimes directly through discovered vulnerabilities, or in this case preying on the vigilance of users who aim to keep it updated to prevent the very sort of thing caused by the fake and malicious...
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Let's start with the good news. Cryptocurrency mining on GPUs has waned considerably, and the shortage of graphics cards that made it nearly impossible to score a mid-range or high-end GPU at or near MSRP is over (for the most part). Are you ready for the bad news? Be that as it may, cryptocurrency mining hacks are on the rise, and a leaked tool by the US National Security Agency (NSA) may be partially to blame. That's the takeaway from a new report by Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA), a cybersecurity association with some major names among its members, including Cisco, Juniper Networks, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec, and others. The tool in question is "EternalBlue," developed by the NSA and leaked last...
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If you've invested heavily in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past year, you probably need a stiff drink right about now. The cryptocurrency "boom" is no more, and values are heading south, much to the chagrin of crypto miners that thought mining with off-the-shelf [and custom] hardware would bring them digital fortunes. Take Bitcoin, for example; the cryptocurrency fell to as little as $5,900 in the past 24 hours before rebounding to just over 6,000 as of this writing. As recently as May, Bitcoin was trading at around $10,000 and in late 2017, it was topping $19,000. In total, Bitcoin is down 68 percent from its meteoric high. Things are looking worse over in Ethereum...
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When it comes to cryptocurrency exchanges, most of the news that we hear is regards to the latest hack attempt, where poor souls lose millions of dollars (usually never to be seen again). This Wild Wild West atmosphere in the cryptocurrency market has led many to doubt the sustainability of investing in Ethereum and Bitcoin. However, Coinbase is doing its best to help legitimize its cryptocurrency exchange in the eyes of investors with the hiring of veteran finance exec Jeff Horowitz. Horowitz served as the managing director and global head of compliance for Bank of New York Mellon Corp. subsidiary Pershing LLC. In his new role, Horowitz will serve as Coinbase's chief compliance...
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The ups and downs of the cryptocurrency market have meant that it's been a wild year for PC gamers. Cryptocurrency miners rushed out to purchases hordes of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, which drove up the prices for people that just wanted to play Doom in 4K without having to pay an arm and a leg for a graphics card. Luckily, graphics cards prices are starting to fall back to normalcy as the cryptocurrency craze wanes, and the latest deal to come as a result is on the MSI Gaming Radeon RX 580 8G V1. Amazon has the card on sale for $259.99 with free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members. To make the deal even sweeter, there is a $30 mail-in rebate that brings the...
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To the delight of anyone who's been eying a new graphics card for a while, there seems to be a definitive end in sight to the price-gouging supply/demand effect in the GPU market. In recent months, mining has seemingly died down quite a bit, as a result of cryptocurrency values likewise taking a major turn for the worse. Currently, crypto values are low enough that for the vast majority of people, mining is much less lucrative than it was even just a few months ago, with the most ardent miners continuing along in hopes that the value of their coins of choice increase over time. Some of those miners may not even be using GPUs, but instead dedicated ASICs, lifting even more load off of the GPU...
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It was only a few months ago when there was talk of Bitcoin being on a trajectory to perhaps hit $50,000 or even $100,000, which could make late adopters wealthy and early adopters obscenely rich (more so than they have already become). Fast forward to today, however, and the future is as murky as ever. Not that it was ever crystal clear. However, the virtual currency dipped below $6,000 today, it's lowest value since November. The recent drop further underscores the volatility of cryptocurrency, and the overall uncertainty over its future. Proponents of cryptocurrency will say they have heard this a million times before, and that analysts are once again overreacting to a drop in value. And they...
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