Rogue Bitcoin Code Found in Competitive Counter-Strike Servers

[AdamG3691]

Well I'm gonna go ahead and admit to not having a fecking clue what a bitcoin is.
Read the Wikipedia article and I'm still not getting it.
Apparently its worth money but it can be made (as I understand it) by hijacking and using other people's graphics cards.
Frankly I'm confused.

Bitcoins are an attempt to make a currency that's not the product of a government or political authority figure. That theoretically should lend it an extra measure of stability.

Bitcoins are not printed at a treasury, nor did the creator decide that he should have all of them to start. Instead, they wanted the total supply of bitcoins to be slowly growing in a manner not directly within his control. So they can be created by anyone.

How new bitcoins are generated is that they're given to people who show a certain amount of work dedicated to making a bitcoin. So, the central bitcoin server proposes a problem that is very hard for modern computers to solve, but easy for computers to check that a given solution is correct. Anyone who solves this otherwise useless problem gets a few bitcoins.

To your question: the types of repetitive calculations that solving those problems require are things that graphics cards are very good at doing.

Not having government backing it makes it worth less. The whole reason any currency works is because we say it does, with the full faith and credit of the United States. Buitcoin will last for a while, but as the market has shown, it has no stability and I'm pretty sure it will crash and burn within the next 5 years.

but isn't the "government" backing them the internet itself?

to me it looks like it's shifted the person who says how much stuff is worth from governments to the internet, if users as a whole say theyre worthless, they'll be worthless, if we say they're the best thing since a blowjob machine that also dispenses the ambrosia of the gods then they will be

 

[phoenixcalm]

The whole bitcoin thing reminds me of the Glenn Beck/Ron Paul "Put all your money into gold; it's the only thing that has real value" malarkey, except even stupider because at least gold will always physically exist and be worth something to someone. Bitcoins are still the monetary equivalent of an imaginary friend; it exists because people say it does, and if a virus were to wipe out the computers containing the data saying who owns how many of them - or if everyone wakes up and decides this is all bullshit - that's it.

Plus, does anyone know what these "bitcoin mining" programs actually do? For all we know, they could be helping some network of hackers brute-force crack public encryption keys so they can break into the Pentagon or something.

The only reason why gold backed money is suggested is because there are only a few that own the majority of gold in the world. Consolidation of gold has been going on for thousands of years. However the VALUE of money and what backs as to determine it's value, is an illusion.

Your comments are exactly right, however you do realize that (for the most part) you can replace "bitcoin" with "dollars" and ask roughly the exact same questions.

Remember, it doesn't matter what backs your money; all that matters is who controls it's quantity.

By controlling it's quantity you can make it scarce, causing depressions, or make it plentiful, causing economic boom. And if you controlled it's quantity you can also control markets, create bubbles, buy up properties and other assets for cents on the dollar. In other words, enslavement. There is a reason why the banks who control the money systems in the world are private and all practice fractional reserve banking (deliberate inflation and deflation as to distort the value of money and thus property in the attempts to seize resources).

I would suggest researching money in general to understand this issue since using general concepts of money provided by the media should not be considered an informed statement.

 

[Kilo24]

Well I'm gonna go ahead and admit to not having a fecking clue what a bitcoin is.
Read the Wikipedia article and I'm still not getting it.
Apparently its worth money but it can be made (as I understand it) by hijacking and using other people's graphics cards.
Frankly I'm confused.

Bitcoins are an attempt to make a currency that's not the product of a government or political authority figure. That theoretically should lend it an extra measure of stability.

Bitcoins are not printed at a treasury, nor did the creator decide that he should have all of them to start. Instead, they wanted the total supply of bitcoins to be slowly growing in a manner not directly within his control. So they can be created by anyone.

How new bitcoins are generated is that they're given to people who show a certain amount of work dedicated to making a bitcoin. So, the central bitcoin server proposes a problem that is very hard for modern computers to solve, but easy for computers to check that a given solution is correct. Anyone who solves this otherwise useless problem gets a few bitcoins.

To your question: the types of repetitive calculations that solving those problems require are things that graphics cards are very good at doing.

Not having government backing it makes it worth less. The whole reason any currency works is because we say it does, with the full faith and credit of the United States. Buitcoin will last for a while, but as the market has shown, it has no stability and I'm pretty sure it will crash and burn within the next 5 years.

Government backing is a good thing on its own. The issue is that with government backing usually comes with the ability for said government to print as much money as they want whenever they want - that it's a fiat currency. It means that the complex issue of how to maintain public faith in a currency can easily be utterly ruined if the government prints too much money to redeem its debts. And nobody understands the market enough to reliably predict crashes, let alone politicians who are desperate to find easy solutions to hard financial problems.

Bitcoin might very well crash and burn. I don't think it'll be due to its inherent stability unless a major flaw is found in the algorithms used for. There are issues with its being easily anonymous, which may cause a stigma with its use since a lot of illicit activities find anonymity to be helpful. There's always the problem of forgetting your password, or of malware stealing your bitcoins - this is a bigger problem with bitcoins because there is no central authority to confirm it. And the whole thing may never take off to the degree that it needs to become a viable currency.

A currency fails if and only if people do not expect that other people will find significant value in that currency. That is the only thing required, but it's an incredibly difficult thing to predict accurately (especially for atypical currencies.) Honestly, you can probably predict that all new currencies will fail and have a more accurate prediction than the vast majority of deeper prediction methods, simply because most new currencies do fail. It's hard to say for Bitcoins specifically, however.

 

[Kilo24]

The whole bitcoin thing reminds me of the Glenn Beck/Ron Paul "Put all your money into gold; it's the only thing that has real value" malarkey, except even stupider because at least gold will always physically exist and be worth something to someone. Bitcoins are still the monetary equivalent of an imaginary friend; it exists because people say it does, and if a virus were to wipe out the computers containing the data saying who owns how many of them - or if everyone wakes up and decides this is all bullshit - that's it.

Plus, does anyone know what these "bitcoin mining" programs actually do? For all we know, they could be helping some network of hackers brute-force crack public encryption keys so they can break into the Pentagon or something.

Every modern currency is only as valuable as people think it is. Or, to be more precise, it's precisely as valuable as people predict that other people will find it valuable. Unless we're talking about cows or food or anything with a inherent use (which does not include gold) as a currency, that will always be true.

Mathematically, there are some very strong guarantees of stability on how bitcoins are generated and how transactions occur. Furthermore, it's designed to be decentralized such that it's very, very hard to wipe out all the computers with the relevant information. The global EMP blast or massive failure of power infrastructure that would be needed for it would be less likely than, say, the US government collapsing and ruining its currency.

Don't say that because Bitcoins are digital they're somehow less valuable than normal currencies. Most money is just a digital number in a bank nowadays, and the only reason that paper currency is worth anything is because a government says so (and gets very well paid for doing so by being able to print as much of it as they want.) There's a very delicate balance associated with faith in a currency, and putting needing to put faith in politicians that they won't print lots of money is a very big disruptor of that balance.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Am I the only one who is astonished that someone actually took responsibility for this debacle, let alone someone who's in charge of the servers (yes wasn't actually guilty of running the malicious code)? Imagine if the developers of Aliens: Colonial Marines did that instead of endlessly pointing fingers at each other. Hell, I know members of my government who would look less ridiculous if the admitted they fucked up instead of blaming people on the other side of parliament, or even people they have hired (because, you know, having shoddy employees totally doesn't reflect on you at all).

 

[The Lugz]

and this is why multi-player needs to die,
even the bloody coders want to troll you and they can blow up your pc doing it >.>

 

[Seydaman]

I am pleased with the response. Otherwise, I've messed around with Bitcoins a bit before, I find them neat, but they seem a dangerous investment.

 

[Micalas]

Absolutely, deliciously evil and brilliant. I have no other ways to describe this.