The Ghost in the blockchain:
Child porn in your crypto???!!!
Ever since the beginning of programming on computers and game consoles, programmers have been including so called "Easter eggs" hidden in their codes where special undocumented features of their gadgets or software would be activated using a very particular and usually complicated sequence of actions or keystrokes. This is an ongoing venture up to this day and for example the Chrome browser until recently (haven't seen it for a while) had a little running T-Rex dinosaur game embedded in its internet non connection error page. A whole range of games, software apps and even some hardware are all filled with at least one of these surprises placed there purposefully by their developers. On this article titled A Brief History of Easter Eggs in Tech you will find a good compilation of these technological surprises packaged in software and hardware.
T-Rex Runner Chrome Easter egg game
Easter eggs in the Blockchain
A similar surprise has been hard-coded in the original blockchain implementation of bitcoin since its inception where block zero, better known as the Genesis Block, has a message included in the first transaction by bitcoin originator Satoshi Nakamoto that reads: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". The message is believed to be a comment from Nakamoto on the state of finances being run by central banks instead of being run in a decentralized manner by people themselves (the text is a front page headline from The Times newspaper print edition of January 3rd, 2009), and there it will be preserved for all eternity for the blockchain stores every transaction ever made and it is passed on together with the information of all transactions ever made since.
Image Source
This could have triggered similar attempts at hijacking the blockchain protocol to include other messages, encrypted data, files, and even photographs. All this is done by sending bitcoin transactions to false Bitcoin addresses that represent information encoded in a specific way, any money sent in this manner is lost because of the use of false bitcoin addresses (usually tiny amounts are spent), the result is messages, prayers, pictures, programs and who knows what the frig else all hidden in the blockchain. For example, a tribute to cryptographer Len Sassaman was put in the Bitcoin blockchain a couple weeks after his death by Dan Kaminsky. The full tribute can be seen in the following image.
A bunch of other stuff has been included in the blockchain through some form of hijacking its protocol and encoding things there, and you can check out more info on this on this article: Hidden Surprises in the Blockchain and how they are stored.
Malware and Child porn in your Crypto
Now, following this (block)chain of events some security experts from Interpol and Kaspersky Labs have also started warning that using similar methods some malicious bad guys could apply this into coding malware very effectively within the blockchain in multiple modules. In this manner they would be able to have their evil malware permanently accessible to be run from infected machines FOREVER. Now, I don't know how effective or efficient this would be for that purpose, but it gets you thinking.
Another, maybe more disturbing possibility was also brought up by these two security experts, and that was that maybe child porn could be encoded in an encrypted form within the blockchain in a similar fashion as all of the other stuff that can be found there currently. Who knows if that is already there among some of the other encrypted data that has been found already. The perpetrators then would only have to go around selling the keys to the encrypted info, probably in exchange for crypto money, and they wouldn't have to carry their muck around with them. It could be an ugly fact to fathom that while you are happily mining you could be including and passing along this material unwittingly in your computers.
The following video has the security experts' whole presentation on the matter, it's kind of long and somewhat technical, but could be interesting to see for some of the more geekily inclined.
Decentralized Malware on The Blockchain
If you think about it, the Steemit protocol may be even more easily hijacked to do all of those things, and probably a lot more, since it is specially implemented to hold large amounts of text based material. Has this happened already? Probably, but if it hasn't yet, it will certainly occur too.
Scary or what?
#security #blockchain #bitcoin #steemit #minnowsunite
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Great article, thanks. You raise a good point that Steemit seems vulnerable to an attack by flooding it with child porn or other prohibited/discreditory content.