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Bitcoin Exchange 'Faced 150,000 Hack Attacks Every Second’ Showing 'Technology Risk'
DAILY PRICE REPORT
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,348.00, EUR 973.57 and GBP 810.44 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,334.25, EUR 961.55 and GBP 800.87 per ounce.
Gold rose $0.7 or 0.05% yesterday, to $1,339.90/oz. Silver dropped $0.08 or 0.38% to $20.81/oz.
Gold in US Dollars - 1 Year (Bloomberg)
Gold rose in all currencies again today and headed towards a four month high in dollar terms as the standoff between Russia and Ukraine led to demand for gold as a haven. Silver surged 1.4%, platinum added 0.3% to $1,481.60/oz and palladium rose 0.3% to $777.80/oz.
Resistance is between $1,350 and $1,360 and above that at and $1,435 per ounce.
The U.S. and Europe are continuing to threaten Russia, the world’s biggest energy producer and miner of palladium, with economic sanctions for sending troops into Ukraine’s Crimea region. Ukraine’s new prime minister prepared to meet President Obama and western nations threatened further repercussions if Russia failed to defuse tensions.
In South Africa, more than 70,000 members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union have been on strike since January. South Africa is the largest producer of platinum and second biggest for palladium after Russia.
Speculation that terrorism may have contributed to the missing plane in Malaysia may also be leading to a safe haven bid. Fingers are being pointed at Iran which could lead to renewed geopolitical tension between Iran and some western nations.
Bitcoin Exchange 'Faced 150,000 Hack Attacks Every Second’
Mt. Gox’s lawyers confirmed yesterday that 750,000 Bitcoins belonging to the firm’s customers had gone “missing”, along with around 100,000 units that the company owned.
Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox faced massive hacker offensives last month. It is alleged that it came under some 150,000 DDoS attacks per second for several days ahead of its spectacular failure.
The Tokyo based exchange, which filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of February, admitted that it has lost half a billion dollars in the digital currency. It has come under serious cyber attacks in particular since around February 7, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
While Mt. Gox faced hacker attempts to steal Bitcoins, the exchange also confronted massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, crippling its technology and systems, the Japanese newspaper said without naming its sources.
Under DDoS attacks, hackers hijack multiple computers to send a flood of data to the target, crippling computer systems. The attacks on Mt. Gox lasted for several days, the newspaper said.
Unlike physical gold bullion, Bitcoin is generated by complex chains of interactions among a huge network of computers around the planet. This creates advantages and disadvantages.
Bitcoin has huge dependency on systems and technology. In this, there is a resemblance with the modern digital banking system as the world is pushed towards a cashless society. Were hack attacks launched on banks, investment providers or exchanges, many of whom are now wholly dependent on website technology and user interfaces, and investors would be exposed and could incur losses.
Technological risk and systemic risk are another important reason to own physical gold coins and bars in segregated and allocated accounts. Having the ability to pick up a phone, fax or email and take delivery of bullion is also important.
Mark Karpeles, chief executive of Mt. Gox, apologised for the collapse at a news conference earlier this month, blaming a “weakness in our system”, but predicted that the market will grow.
Our modern financial system and its dependence on technology is far more vulnerable than is realised.
The 7 Key Bullion Storage Must Haves
A diversification into precious metals remains prudent and will again protect investors, both retail and institutional, pensions owners and savers, over the medium and long term. However, this is only the case if bullion owned is physical bullion coins and bars.
Download your copy of ‘7 Key Allocated Gold Storage Must Haves’ here.
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I agree. Some primary dealers asked the NSA for help {or NSA asked primary dealers quants for help} cutting bitcoin down to size. They lopped off the block of bitcoin. Similar to sellin 50,000 contracts of gold at 1am est.
This column is crap along with most of the others cruising in the ZH headerboard.
BTW did anybody else notice the pumps don't work for BTC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToQ0n3itoII
Duh.
Strange story. Perhaps they ran off with the bitcoins themselves. When under a DDOS attack -which can be launched in order to produce the very wanted superuser login- why then try to continue to keep your systems online? Go off line or register your site with new ip addresses and put a 'sorry for the inconvenience' page.
I ran a server once. Was under constant hack attacks originating from China. I managed to get into their systems and had their windows startup screens (yes they ran their attacks from Windoze computers) replaced with something hinting about their small private parts. They never bothered me again.
Excellent. Windoze not permitted on this computer. or Netscrape; or anything MicroShit produces. It's either Linux or lose it around here. My Math Professor friend says Bitcoin is definetely vulnerable; "it's just a matter of time". Screwy idea in the first place.
Ofcourse they ran off with the loot themselves.
Paging Reggie Middleton...
You got a fix for this, right Reggie, right?
Reggie waited a little long to board the ponzi train to get a load of suckers to part with their money to buy into hot air, oops I meant to say "coins" ofcourse but he did have some succes in the past, I'll give him that.
Junk away fonefuck.
Edit
I see your other personas are also here but it's still you isn't it.
Every DDOS ping is not a hack attack.
And every IP address on the web is hit with probes every second, this ain't news.
Exactly, this is naught but fear-mongering.
http://flic.kr/p/kyKgtF
Bitcoin backed by nothing: shows every weakness possible, not just to hacking
Bitcoin is backed by nothing. So is gold. Nothing needs to be backed by anything.
Stop trying to think!
If I may make a quick statement. You singlehandedly turned off hundreds of people to the idea of BTC. If you are in sales, GET THE FUCK OUT! Many would have been receptive to at least trying it, had it not been for your cunty ways.
Candyman-Candyman-Candyman!!!
Fonestar Satoshi power for the muthafuckin WIN! Global Bitcoin Mascott
Really, this guy could prevent free ice cream sales at a county fair.
You may not want back up, that's fine.
My back up is lead (with the proper delivery systems).
Sorry, too stupid for words.
Gold is backed by the laws of physics. Those laws transcend ALL human weakness.
I think you want to say it's a symbolic form of value without the instrinsic value of something like food, water or air to a scuba diver.
However, that is the defintion of money. Anything that two people decide represents value can be used to trade fungibly, and is therefore money.
Bitcoin's big problem (apart from truly being backed by nothing) is that it tries to be a online payment system.
Well in order to be accessible for public trasnactions, it is also accessible for hacking.
This is like keeping your gold coins (or paper money for that matter) in your mail box instead of a vault. Oops! It's all gone!
I wonder who took them?
Check out this picture, o mighty Pharoah: http://www.frontiernet.net/~jimbot/tutmask.htm
Silver, fone, silver.
Resistance really is futile.
Ah, so that's what Corzine has been up to!
If he had the smarts;)
Hackers? Bullshit.
The first thought I had when I heard of this was that it was an inside job. This type of thing is ALWAYS in inside job.
Probably some major entity who pointed a gun at Mark Karpeles.
This is just news which confirms the major value of bitcoin.
I might buy a few...
Maybe - or maybe some state organization wanted to take the wind out of the sails of bitcoin before it rivals state-issued fiat currency. What better way then to take out a few of the top exchanges?