Hot on the heels of the first major Bitcoin theft — an amount that nearly reached half a million dollars — Symantec caught wind of a Trojan out in the wild that specifically targets and steals Bitcoin wallets. The Trojan, called Infostealer.Coinbit, attempts to locate a Bitcoin wallet and email it to the attacker. The above is a snippet of source code Symantec found on what they call “underground forums,” which attempts to locate a Bitcoin wallet and uploads the wallet using FTP to the attacker’s servers.
Bitcoin users do have the option to encrypt their wallet for an extra layer of protection, but if someone is clever enough to steal a Bitcoin wallet, chances are they are clever enough to break an encrypted wallet open. Still, it’s always better to be safer. For more info on the Trojan, head on over to Symantec’s details page, and hopefully someone creates the computer equivalent of those old wallet-to-pocket chains for Bitcoin wallets sometime soon.
(Symantec via Hacker News)
Published: Jun 17, 2011 09:06 am