[ExI] bitcoin again

[Dave Sill]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 3:29 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
>  Please I have a question for our local bitcoin hipsters.
>

I'm only a bitcoin dabbler, so nothing I say about it is definitive.

Imagine a hospital is hacked with ransomware.
>

And doesn't have good backups? For shame.


>  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?
>

I don't think so since the hospital was scammed out of real money.

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.
>

It may be possible to verify that you're dealing with the real bad guys by
having them provide details about the attack that only the attackers would
know.

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.
>

No, bitcoin is basically unforgeable.

Another question, how can you determine that a bitcoin is genuine?
>

I don't know enough to explain it, but it's part of the design of the
bitcoin system. There's no way to create fake bitcoins.


> How does one verify that a bitcoin is genuine now?
>

If you can put it in a wallet, it's genuine.

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.
>

See:

  https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech

Which has this link to a Bitcoin textbook:


https://d28rh4a8wq0iu5.cloudfront.net/bitcointech/readings/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf

-Dave
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