Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Wikileaks Warns: Bitcoins Open to CIA

This should come as no surprise to EPJ readers.

Based on a review of the Vault 7 document dump made by Wikileaks, it appears the CIA can under certain circumstances hack into your Bitcoins.

Wendy McElroy reports for Bitcoin.com in an article titled,Your Bitcoins Open to CIA and Criminals, Heed Wikileaks’ Warning :
Wikileaks has exposed the CIA’s hacking tools and techniques in “the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.” Some readers are probably compromised without knowing it...

“Vault7” is Wikileaks’ codename for a series of massive document releases on the e-surveillance and cyber-warfare techniques of the CIA...“Year Zero” is the most interesting [document dump] to Bitcoin users because it documents proximate dangers.
I have been suspicious of Bitcoin for a long time. Off the top of my head. without access to CIA hacking tools, I can think of a number of ways Bitcoin users can be compromised.

Bitcoin is not a guard against privacy intrusion. It is not a "libertarian" currency. It pretty much falls into the category of cashless money (always a bad idea)/ Indeed, in the IMF Paper on a cashless society, Bitcoin is mentioned tangentially and not unfavorably:
If de-cashing is based on the distributed ledger-like technology, such as the Bitcoin, it can dramatically reduce the cost of international transfers, especially remittances intermediated by correspondent banks. 

 -RW 

(ht Chris Rossini)

2 comments:

  1. The encryption used by BTC was developed by the NSA. Do you think that they don't have a backdoor?

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  2. The ex uses bitcoin as an easy $$$ transfer from Russia, Iran and other "sanctioned" countries. Beats the sh#$%^t out of Western Union, etc. Just don't expect miracles from it.

    ReplyDelete