What Morgan Spurlock left out of his Bitcoin documentary: How to steal bitcoins

Morgan Spurlock, the documentarist who brought us theaward-winning film Super Size Me, now has an investigative show on CNN called Inside Man. His recent episode dealt with living only on the cryptocurrency Bitcoin for a week, taking the opportunity to discuss Bitcoin security and the impact on the Bitcoin exchange market when Mt.Gox lost nearly a billion bitcoin to theft. While Spurlock spent a great deal explaining how to secure bitcoins, he didnt offer nearly as much detail on how they can be stolen from whats supposed to be a highly protected exchange market.

Those tracking Bitcoin news probably noticed the growing string of Bitcoin services that have recently shut down. Some have filed for bankruptcy related to the plummeting value of Bitcoin, while others have closed their doors after being hacked.

Like in the case of Mt.Gox, which filed for bankruptcy in early 2014 after allegedly being hacked. The once popular exchange lost $27 million in cash and nearly a billion bitcoins worth close to $450 million at that time, and claimed that hackers were the ones responsible for the missing Bitcoins.

In a modern day twist on bank heists, hackers today are infiltrating these cryptocurrencyexchanges to get the bitcoins stored by the services. Even if the value of Bitcoin has significantly dropped since the latter part of 2013, a single Bitcoin is currently equivalent to $238.66. Now imagine getting a hold of 1,000 Bitcoins; thats a lot of money to spend.

But how easy it is to steal Bitcoins? Is hacking the only way to steal the digital currency? And is there actually a market for stolen Bitcoins?

Malicious software or malware can be used to infiltrate systems and obtain data covertly or make the system perform tasks surreptitiously. Malware can come in various forms and serve different purposes, including stealing Bitcoins. When installed in a computer, malware can start looking for a wallet.dat file or other commonly used filenames and directories related to Bitcoin wallets, and then transfer the needed files to the remote server. From there, a users key can be extracted from the wallet to start transferring the Bitcoins to another wallet.

Malware can also attack exchange services and steal user credentials by intercepting the login process. Another method includes man-in-the-browser malware, which waits until a user copies a Bitcoin address. The thief then replaces the copied Bitcoin address with his desired address so the Bitcoin will be transferred to the thief. A Bitcoin address is pretty complex and hard to memorize, which means users wont easily notice if the address has changed.

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What Morgan Spurlock left out of his Bitcoin documentary: How to steal bitcoins