Earlier this week, an unknown hacker used a rather interesting method to take control of the traffic managed by 19 Internet Service Providers (the names of these ISP's were not disclosed). An attack with this description would be classified as a “BGP Hijacking”. According to Dell's SecureWorks security division, BGP Hijackings aren't something unheard of. It's been a wide spread issue since 1998, when L0pht said they could “take down the entire Internet in 30 minutes”.
Let's explain a little bit about how this hacker was able to accomplish all of this so easily. From February to May, the hacker was able to use the BGP Hijack to redirect computers that were in the mining pools that were being attacked to his malicious server. Once the victims connected to the server, a “reconnect” command would be sent to the computer. When this command is received, the computer would switch over to dedicating its processing power to mining coins for the hacker. However, in a mining pool, the payout would be shared between the miners. That was not the case with the computers that were infected inside of a mining pool. All of the coins they were able to mine would be stockpiled and delivered to the hacker instead. Can someone say, cha-ching?
Sounds a lot easier than it probably is. This would have most likely gone on longer if a Dell researchers computer had not been taken victim by this hackers Minecraft gone wrong experiment. Dell's SecureWorks security division has reported that roughly $83,000+ has been collected by the hacker in both BTC Currency (including Dogecoin and Worldcoin).
The fact that such a thing can be done in the first place is a lot more alarming that it may seem. Picture this, if someone's able to steal $83,000+ in Bitcoins by using the BGP exploit, imagine what someone from outside of the United States could do if they were to attempt to steal classified information via Internet traffic? Nothing is ever really safe on the Internet, once it's accessed in one place, there's millions of eyes looking at it.
Has anyone in the Se7enSins community ever had their Bitcoin currency stolen from them? I wonder if some of you are going to be more cautious about your mining. I would hate to get a crack in my pickaxe.
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A quick thanks to Chris7S for bringing an interesting topic to the table.
