From a scammer point of view, it is a pretty clever way to select targets.
The problem is that defensive security still is not a big enough priority for customers or vendors. When customers walk in to a computer or mobile device store and ask "is this thing safe enough to store my Bitcoins?" and go elsewhere if the answer isn't good enough, we may see vendors up their game.
The same flaws that let a government see you naked let crackers steal your cryptocoins. When I'm in an optimistic mood, I think that cryptocurrency could be the thing we need to motivate more people to care about security.
This is absolutely true. Most people care about price over any other variable.
Yet even areas where there are people who prioritize security consistently fail (Apple vs Jailbreakers, Open Source SSL/TLS developers vs CA validation failure). There is literally no code on this planet you can trust 100%. Even the code that sent people into space had bugs.
edit: I do like the idea of cryptocurrencies, but I don't trust software enough yet. I'm more bullish on the idea of P2P shared blockchains in the form of namecoin as a replacement for DNS etc.
Crypto currency or not, all of our money is now digital really, it has to be to move fast enough and keep up.
The analysis on Securelist the TechCrunch post is referring to is located at [3].
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/200k30/the_tibanneb...
[2] https://3d3.ca/ijKOh.vbs#eV7i3HIliI93y+UR
[3] http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/8196/Analysis_of_Malware_f...
Basically, the code is searching for bitcoin.conf and wallet.dat in the typical storage place Bitcoin-Qt stores its data. If it manages to find these files, it reads them and sends the contents of them off to two different web addresses, effectively stealing the Bitcoin wallet. The paths and filenames the code uses to find this data are Base64 encoded in the source code so a text search through the code will come up with nothing unless the strings used for searching are Base64 encoded first.
Whoever dumped it is talking about it in the reddit thread, start there. Those are definitely function like things.
"Yeah, I just wanted to see what it did."
Luckily, some were sensible enough to run it in a virtual machine.
or, that virtual machines should be more common - mum and dad's computers should have vm software installed, so that they can then be free from having to worry bout things they download. The mantra could be " run in the vm, and you'll be safe".
I did like the jokey idea someone had a little while back of putting a (very) small wallet on servers and watching the blockchain for transactions therefrom as an intrusion detection system.
So, about 2 or 3 years ago, they cleverly rebranded "MTG OX" to "Mt Gox" without changing the domain name.
Then they cleverly lost $500 million.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/200k30/the_tibanneb...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20152d/vpsbgeu_took...
The headline says "Users" were "Robbed of Bitcoin", but does not give us any proof. I suspect the writer, John Biggs, could not find anyone.
