[ExI] bitcoin again

[spike]

Please I have a question for our local bitcoin hipsters.

 

Imagine a hospital is hacked with ransomware.  News agency reports it.  Some
yahoo demands 10k in bitcoins, hospital pays, nothing happens, so it was a
phony offer to unlock.  Now will the Feds even bother trying to go after the
bad guy?  Would they shrug and claim that no money changed hands, that the
Fed doesn't recognize bitcoin as currency?

 

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/03/31/medstar-health-still-suffering-outage
s-after-cyberattack.html?intcmp=hplnws

 

So now, any time the news majors announce a hospital has been hacked, the
hospital can expect to get jillions of offers to unlock the files for a
small amount of bitcoins.  It would be impossible for the victim to know
which one is genuine, if any.  They would have little expectation the
government will do anything to catch the bad guy.

 

Any evil plot the good guys can think of, the bad guys can think of too, but
more and eviler.

 

I have an idea: create a fictitious health network, give it a name that
sounds reasonable enough, such as Vesuvius Health.  Make an announcement
that a major hack attack has occurred, files locked, Help! Save us,
Underdog, etc, create some counterfeit bitcoins (can that be done?) track
where the offers to unlock come from and who tries to use the phony
bitcoins.

 

Another question, how can you determine that a bitcoin is genuine?  I am
assuming there is a way.  Otherwise, a bad guy could have a bunch of phony
bitcoins, hospital is hack attacked, bad guy offers to sell them his
bitcoins, they wouldn't know the bitcoins were phony, he makes off with the
cash.

 

Another idea: bitcoin hipster makes up a known-phony bitcoin purse, offers
to sell them to the hospital for a very modest price after learning from
mainstream news sources the hospital has been hack attacked.  The hospital
doesn't really know how to create phony bitcoins so they give her a few
hundred bucks for the traceable counterfeits.  She hasn't broken any laws,
the hospital hasn't, fair game.

 

Another idea: create a company that offers genuine-looking verifications for
traceable phony bitcoins, offer those to the hackers.

 

How does one verify that a bitcoin is genuine now?

 

I don't understand why those kinds of schemes wouldn't work.  If they do,
the hospital has a vested interest in keeping the hack attack secret from
the mainstream media.

 

Oh I am soooo not hip.  

 

spike

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