Re:The Increasing Trend of Online Extortion
by codeshaman on Wednesday November 26, 2014 @06:14AM
(#8661854)
Of course, everybody should do that. But since we live in an imperfect world, not everybody will do it.
As you're saying, this should be implemented in the BTC clients themselves and they should not let you make large transfers without first warning of the dangers. But what if you're buying a boat or a car or a house ?
I've lived in the ex Soviet Union in the 90's and extorsion through torture was a common thing back then. But now we might see the 21st century version of those guys, probably a bit more gentle - no need to shoot or kill people, just force them to press Enter and you're done.
Re:The Increasing Trend of Online Extortion
by icebraining on Wednesday November 26, 2014 @06:20AM
(#8661870)
If you're buying a boat or a car, you'll have to do a big transfer. But how is that any different than buying something expensive using a bank account? It's not a new problem with cryptocurrencies.
Re:The Increasing Trend of Online Extortion
by throwaway84356 on Wednesday November 26, 2014 @07:39AM
(#8662048)
Your bank wire doesn't leak the balance of your account to the recipient. It is a new and unique problem with some cryptocurrencies. Of course, we have already proposed solutions to problem this with ring signatures, stealth addresses, 'coinjoin', 'zerocash', 'TITAN', etc.
Re:The Increasing Trend of Online Extortion
by icebraining on Wednesday November 26, 2014 @07:47AM
(#8662073)
As I wrote, you can simply move money around so that the final transfer doesn't reveal your original balance, e.g. if I have a balance on address A of 30 and I want to pay something that costs 4, I can just create multiple addresses where I move and subdivide the 30 until the last address only has a little over 4.
The recipient has no sure way of knowing that the original address was mine - I might just have withdrawn from a service like Coinbase.
Re:The Increasing Trend of Online Extortion
by mehwoot on Wednesday November 26, 2014 @06:59AM
(#8661960)
than buying something expensive using a bank account
Because a robber can't demand you transfer money from your bank account and expect not to be traced, that's why.
Re:The Increasing Trend of Online Extortion
by throwaway84356 on Wednesday November 26, 2014 @07:54AM
(#8662089)
Yes, you could cut it up into new keys, but there is still much data leaked. Taint analysis, change address balances, and the fact your holding addrs don't have 100s of tx's and thus are not an exchange hot wallet is a give away.
It shouldn't be very hard to design the UI to make it hard to fall into this trap, either. Easy way: when doing a small payment from an address with a large balance, the client can automatically add intermediate transfers to avoid the direct link.