Recently a user on the bitcoin forums reported a theft of a very large amount of bitcoins – 25,000 of them (worth approx $500,000 USD). See here. This is, to my knowledge, the first major theft of such a large amount of the virtual currency (assuming the reports are true!).
It appears that the poor user (‘allinvain’) had his/her machine compromised and someone made off with the stash. Just goes to show, a virtual wallet can be just as vulnerable as your real wallet folks. On a personal note, I think keeping any reasonably large value of BTC on a windows machine is just asking for trouble.
In what appears to be an interesting twist, a bitcoin address reported to be associated with ‘lulzsec’ and apprently published by lulzsec appears to have received an anonymous donation of 25,000 bitcoins on the same day that ‘allinvain’s 25,000 bitcoins went missing See here. Lines are already being drawn between the two: here
Lulzsec have always been known for going after the big boys – governments, organisations and that kind of thing (usually with good reason TBH). This would be a whole new twist if lulzsec are now accepting money from donors who have stolen out of the pockets of individuals. Of course, this could all be smoke and mirrors – perhaps someone has a vested interest in discrediting lulzsec.
That of course, does not mean the bitcoin donation apparently sent to lulzsec is the same 25,000 coins that went missing from user ‘allinvain’ – it could be a completely different 25k! For example, someone with an active interest in generating negative feeling towards lulzsec could have seized upon the opportunity the theft presented and sent the coins to lulzsec to try to implicate them somehow (though admittedly, this would need to be someone/some organisation with very deep pockets – though lulzsec have had run ins with such organisations lately).
There is also a posting on twitter which appears to show a user sending a “percentage of findings” to lulzsec. Are the two related? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The timing looks very co-incidental though.
If you are into bitcoins, always secure your wallet. Make sure its somewhere not accessible to the outside world. Encrypt it.
My advice is to have an encrypted offline ‘savings’ wallet which you transfer coins to every day (USB pen perhaps?). This way any compromise of your ‘working’ machine can only take coins worth the value of that days wallet.
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