Bitcoin ddos

Bitcoin Was the 'Victim of Its Own Success,' Not DDOS Attack

By Stan Schroeder 2013-04-11 08:45:11 UTC

Bitcoin. the world's most popular virtual currency, yesterday took a huge nosedive — from its all-time-high of $265 to as low as $105 — but the reason is not a DDOS as some have speculated.

Instead, the leading Bitcoing exchange, Mt.Gox. claims that Bitcoin was "a victim of its own success," with the lag from too much interest in the currency causing many investors to sell, which lead to a market panic.

"The rather astonishing amount of new account opened in the last few days added to the existing one plus the number of trade made a huge impact on the overall system that started to lag. As expected in such situation people started to panic, started to sell Bitcoin in mass (Panic Sale) resulting in an increase of trade that ultimately froze the trade engine," wrote Mt.Gox on its Facebook page .

Mt.Gox added some numbers to fortify its claims. According to the exchange, the number of trades executed tripled in the last 24 hours, and the number of new accounts opened went from 60,000 in March alone to 75,000 new accounts created in the "first few days of April," with "roughly 20,000" new accounts created each day.

Mt.Gox promises to do its best to remedy the lag issues; in fact, the exchange will have to be closed for two hours "in the next 12 to 24 hours" to add "several" new servers to the system.

Problems such as these are to be expected since the Bitcoin market is still in its infancy. Still, since nothing scares off investors like a panic sale, Mt.Gox (and other Bitcoin exchanges) will have to do more to ensure stability of their system and avoid huge disturbances like this one.

Image courtesy of Mt.Gox

Bitcoin Under Attack? Dwolla & Mt. Gox Both Hit With DDoS Attacks Overnight

Another day, another DDoS attack. This time round, it’s the turn of alternative online payments provider Dwolla. which saw its website taken offline for a brief period of time. The site has since come back online, but the company said in a statement that the some users may still experience issues as the attack remains ongoing.

So far, we don’t have any details on who is attacking Dwolla or why it may have been targeted. All the company would say is that it’s working with security companies to fix the problem, whilst its notified third-party developers that use the service for sending and receiving funds.

According to Dwolla’s most recent post. the firm has made progress with its efforts to stave off the DDoS attack:

“We’ve made meaningful progress with our hosting providers, and are now beginning to test accessibility with the web app. Mobile and API testing to begin soon.”

But from reading the comments at the end of the post, it’s clear that many of Dwolla’s customers are less than pleased with its handling of the situation. Dozens of users have posted comments demanding to know when services will be fully restored, while some have been critical of the security measures put in place by the company.

“You all should have a replicated server at another hosting company for times like these. They make software to do this. Has anyone developed a disaster recovery plan?” asks one angry poster.

“Who is running the show there, this should have been factored in when you started your business. I have a lot of money sitting in my account that I need to pay my contract workers with. If you’re going to handle money, your system needs to be bullet proof! I am going to have to explore other options now.”

One recurring theme among posters is that the situation has to do with Bitcoin. As SiliconANGLE’s Kyt Dotson previously reported, the virtual currency’s value has shot through the roof over the last week due to Cyprus’s economic troubles. Dwolla’s problem is that it provides one of the easiest methods of purchasing Bitcoin, but the DDoS attack has prevented many from taking advantage of this.

“My favorite medium by which to fund my Mt. Gox account being down is in no way helping to curb my insane desire to buy bitcoins. I think I may just very well have myself a panic attack,” complains a poster named “Itchy”.

“i think this is why dwolla is down. Everyone wants to fund mTgox to buy BTC. Did they consider that?” replies “utuxia”.

Intriguingly, Mt. Gox reportedly suffered its own DDoS attack last night, according to the IDG News Service. The Japanese company, which is one of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges, said that the attack began on Thursday night and was “stronger than average”, although the site itself doesn’t appear to have been taken offline, reports IDG.

Mt. Gox also commented on the situation with Dwolla. saying it was unable to process payments or withdrawals due to “some delays”. It added that it hopes for the situation to be resolved within the next 12 hours.

Naturally there will be speculation that the two attacks are linked. Since we reported on Bitcoin’s rapid rise last week, the virtual currency is now trading at up to $94 on Mt. Gox, although the Dutch website Webwereld reports that this briefly slipped to $77 yesterday before quickly regaining its lost value. We cannot be sure however, if this hiccup was linked to the DDoS attack or Cyprus’s decision to reopen its banks yesterday.

Bitcoin value slump during yesterday’s DDoS attack

Major Bitcoin exchanges hit with cyberattacks

Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin exchange, said it had been hit with a massive cyberattack.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

As interest has surged in Bitcoin, platforms that support the digital currency have been hit by damaging cyberattacks this week.

Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange that claims to handle more than 70% of all Bitcoin trades, said in a statement on Thursday that it had been hit by a massive Distributed Denial of Service attack. In a DDoS attack, hackers direct a giant traffic surge to their target, overwhelming the site's servers and making it hard for legitimate users to gain access.

The attacks appear to have shaken confidence among some Bitcoin users.

On Wednesday, Bitcoins rose to $147, before pulling back overnight to around $115 as word of the cyberattacks spread. Mt. Gox said the attacks may be an effort to prompt "panic selling", with the hackers hoping to buy up cheap Bitcoins following the panic they've created -- and then waiting for the currency to rise again. They may also be aimed more generally at destabilizing the Bitcoin system.

"[R]emember that Bitcoin, despite being designed to have its value increase over time, will always be the victim of people trying to abuse the system, or even the value of Bitcoin decreasing occasionally," the exchange said.

Mt. Gox said it was suffering its "worst trading lag ever," with some users having difficulty logging into their accounts. The company said it was working to make sure the problem didn't become any more serious.

A Mt. Gox spokesman said in an email that individual accounts had not been compromised. The source of the attack, he added, is "difficult to determine."

How Bitcoin works

Bitcoin is a four-year-old digital currency developed outside the authority of governments and central banks and designed to allow worldwide payments between users. The value of Bitcoins has surged in recent weeks amid decreasing trust in traditional banking systems, particularly after Cyprus imposed a tax on top bank depositors and placed limits on withdrawals to help pay for a European bailout.

Increased media attention has also helped fuel Bitcoin's rise. On Thursday afternoon, the value of one Bitcoin was hovering around $130, up from $47 two weeks ago and just 5 cents back in mid-2010.

Andreas Baumhof, chief technology officer at the cybersecurity firm ThreatMetrix, noted that financial institutions of all kinds face attacks like the one that hit Mt. Gox. Because the market for Bitcoin is so much smaller than those for other currencies, he added, such disruptions are more likely to generate big swings in Bitcoin's value.

"If I were to target a big financial institution, in no way would the value of the US dollar fluctuate," Baumhof said.

Other Bitcoin utilities have also reported problems in recent days.

Bitcoin-Central, a site for the exchange and storage of the currency, and affiliated service Paytunia said they had detected a security breach on Monday and suspended operations pending an investigation. The services said Wednesday that they hoped to be up and running again by the end of the week, and that customers' account balances had not been affected.

Instawallet, an online service for Bitcoin storage, had a notice posted on its website Thursday saying it had been "fraudulently accessed," and would be suspending service indefinitely. Users have been instructed to submit claims to recover their funds.

As the Bitcoin business matures, service providers for the digital currency will continue to beef up their cybersecurity in the same way large banks and online-payment firms like eBay's ( EBAY. Fortune 500 ) PayPal have in recent years, Baumhof said.

"I'm fairly sure this will ultimately be just a blip," Baumhof said of the disruptions this week.

First Published: April 4, 2013: 2:55 PM ET

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The soaring value of crypto-currency Bitcoin stuttered slightly last night - after a main exchange for the currency was flooded with network traffic and Bitcoin wallet site Instawallet was suspended.

Mt Gox, the most popular Bitcoin exchange, blamed an ongoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack for trading lags and other connectivity problems over recent days. It stated:

Mt.Gox has been suffering from its worst trading lag ever, 502 errors, and at one point some users were not able to log in their account. The culprit is a major DDoS attack against Mt.Gox. Since yesterday, we are continuing to experience a DDoS attack like we have never seen. While we are being protected by companies like Prolexic, the sheer volume of this DDoS left us scrambling to fine-tune the system every few hours to make sure that things don’t go beyond a few 502 error pages and trading lag.

The statement. issued on Thursday, goes on to speculate that the packet-flinging attacks by unknown parties may have been designed to destabilise the fledgling currency that relies on cryptography for transactions.

The attackers may have been attempting to trigger panic selling that they could then profit from by buying the currency at a low point timed to coincide with the temporary suspension of a series of attacks, it suggests.

Japan-based Mt Gox goes on to explain that it is facing an unprecedented increase in new accounts, 57,000 in March alone compared to around 100,000 in the whole of 2012, so that it is now handling 420,000 trades per month and $121m in monthly trade volume.

Bitcoin prices peaked at $147 per BTC early this week before falling back to below $120 per BTC around the time of the attacks. The exchange rate was around $134 per BTC on Thursday. Last year the value of a Bitcoin increased steadily from around $5 to reach about $13 at the start of this year. Since then - after just three months - the value has increased almost exponentially to reach the unprecedented height of $147 per BTC.

It hasn't all been plain sailing. An arcane software problem last month resulted in the price of the digital currency falling 23 per cent to $37 before quickly regaining lost ground, as explained in some depth in a blog post by Paul Ducklin of Sophos here .

As previously reported. a good portion of the recent increase is likely due to the banking crisis in Cyprus. Interest rates are low across Europe, while exchange rates are volatile, factors that make gold, silver and (for the tech savvy) Bitcoins seem like a safe haven. The Dow Jones industrial average has recovered to pre-crash heights but the same can't be said of stock markets in Europe.

The increased value of Bitcoins has made the currency an increasingly attractive target for cybercrooks, among other unwelcome problems, as well as more positive development such as plans to establish the first Bitcoin ATM in Cyprus.

After temporarily suspending its services this week following a security breach, Bitcoin wallet service Instawallet has announced an indefinite suspension of service while it develops a more secure architecture.

Our database was fraudulently accessed, due to the very nature of Instawallet it is impossible to reopen the service as-is.

In the next few days we are going to open the claim process for Instawallet balance holders to claim the funds they had stored before the service interruption.

security documentary on the future of cyberhacking, are bitcoin attacks the next big ddos attacks?

Last week payments start-up Dwolla was also hit by a DDoS attack which also affected third-party developers. Dwolla accepts Bitcoins but it's unclear whether or not the attack on the service is tied to the latter run of hacker attacks against Mt. Gox and Instawallet.

Individual Bitcoins exist as a digitally signed solution to a complex mathematical algorithm. New Bitcoins are "mined" by working out solutions to unsolved algorithms. There are an estimated 11 million Bitcoins in circulation, worth around $1.4bn at current prices, out of a total 21 million Bitcoins that can ever be created, according to limits hard-wired into the system (PDF) .

Regulators are looking to apply money-laundering rules to virtual currencies such as Bitcoin but success on this front is far from assured and may be resisted by some, and not just by libertarians and cypherpunks who've found common cause in backing a digital currency outside the control of governments.

Bitcoins are increasingly going mainstream through development. Expense management firm Expensify, for example, has added Bitcoin as a reimbursement option .

Bitcoin is progressing to the point where the currency offers the cheapest means to carry out foreign currency exchange. However, the use of Bitcoins to anonymously pay for hard drugs and other illicit items on the Silk Road trading marketplace is something that will be undoubtedly used by politicians and other critics to bash the currency. ®

DDoS cripples Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox after trading resumes

(Credit: Satoshi)

Update at 6:15 a.m. PT Friday: Bitcoin's tumble continued after trading resumed. As of now, the digital currency is trading at $69.

Less than two hours after the resumption of Bitcoin trades following a lengthy suspension, currency exchange Mt. Gox is offline, the apparent victim of a distributed-denial-of-service attack.

"We are experiencing a stronger than usual DDoS," the Tokyo-based exchange said tonight in a Google+ post. "We are working in it."

Mt. Gox. which handles three-quarters of the trades in the digital currency, announced a suspension of trading this morning after a rollercoaster trading day yesterday that saw Bitcoin's valuation drop 61 percent before recovering a bit with a 37 percent loss. The decentralized digital currency, which had quadrupled in value in the past four weeks, traded as high as $266 per Bitcoin yesterday before a dramatic correction trimmed its value to $105. It eventually recovered to trade as high as $145 a Bitcoin.

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Mt. Gox denied that yesterday's price plunge was the result of a DDoS, saying that the price drop was due to an unexpected influx of new trades. After allowing the market to "cool down," Mt. Gox resumed trading this evening and Bitcoin immediately lost 35 percent of its value before rebounding to near its previous levels.

The decentralized currency, which was established in 2009 to avoid the prying eyes of law enforcement officials, has grown in popularity in recent months thanks largely to financial uncertainty in Europe and nascent investor curiosity. But the platform also has been the frequent target of hackers who are allegedly trying to disrupt trade execution to manipulate the currency's value.

Bitcoin's value dropped $30 in one day last week after Mt. Gox was the target of a "major" DDoS attack that it said created "its worst trading lag ever."

"Attackers wait until the price of Bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panic-sell their Bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and start buying as much as they can," the Japan-based exchange said in a statement at the time. "Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few days and they profit."

While Bitcoin has been popular lately with investors, it also has been a frequent target for other criminal activity, including thefts, hacks, and scams. Nearly a quarter of a million dollars was stolen in one such virtual heist last year.

Bitcoin Price-Drop Caused By Rush Of Interest, Not DDOS, Says Mt.Gox Exchange; Newcomers Now Opening

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The Bitcoin correction we wrote about yesterday was not caused by a DDOS attack on one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges, Mt.Gox. but rather by a massive spike in interest in the crypto currency, according to Mt.Gox.

During trading yesterday the value of Bitcoin plummet by 60%, dropping from a high of $265 to around $150 (at the time of writing it has climbed back up slightly, to around $180 ). As the value of Bitcoin dropped, San Francisco-based exchange called TradeHill claimed the fall was a result of distributed denial of service attacks on Mt. Gox and Bitstamp .

But Mt.Gox has now posted a notice  on its Facebook page explaining the dramatic dive as the result of too much interest in Bitcoin. As its infrastructure slowed down under the volume of new users crowding in, it said the resulting lag then caused traders to panic and sell off currency — triggering the drop.

Earlier this month the Tokyo-based exchange was hit by a DDOS attack — which it said had caused its “worst trading lag ever “. But this time the lag was caused by the Bitcoin goldrush, and existing investors’ fearing a Bitcoin bubble.

Mt.Gox said 60,000 new accounts were opened in the first few days of April alone, vs 75,000 for the whole month of March, and added that it is seeing an average of 20,000 new accounts opened per day, while trading volume has apparently tripled in the past day.

As a result of the increased strain on its infrastructure, Mt.Gox said it may have to temporarily close the exchange for two hours in order to add more servers. ”We have been busy working on improving things since last week and our team has been working around the clock to improve Mt.Gox to catch up with the demand,” it added. “We will continue to release several updates today and in the coming few days to improve our system overall performance.”

As well as needing to bolster its infrastructure to cope with the influx of new users, having previously been a DDOS target — and with the value of Bitcoin still so high and the market so volatile – Mt.Gox can expect to be a target for hackers for the foreseeable future, which is another reason it needs to beef up its infrastructure.

Mt.Gox’s update follows below in full:

Hi everyone, just a quick update on the situation and what happened last night.

First of all we would like to reassure you but no we were not last night victim of a DDoS but instead victim of our own success!

Indeed the rather astonishing amount of new account opened in the last few days added to the existing one plus the number of trade made a huge impact on the overall system that started to lag. As expected in such situation people started to panic, started to sell Bitcoin in mass (Panic Sale) resulting in an increase of trade that ultimately froze the trade engine!

To give you an idea of how impressive things were here are some numbers that we would love to share with you guys:

- The number of trades executed triple in the last 24hrs.

- The number of new account opened went from 60k for March alone to 75k new account created for the first few days of April! We now have roughly 20,000 new accounts created each day.

Due to these facts we have been busy working on improving things since last week and our team has been working around the clock to improve Mt.Gox to catch up with the demand. We will continue to release several updates today and in the coming few days to improve our system overall performance.

Also please note that we may have to close the exchange for two hours in the next 12 to 24hrs to add several new servers to our system.

Thank you for your understanding and continuous support!

Update:  A notice on Mt.Gox’s Facebook page , posted several hours after the prior update, confirms the planned network downtime maintenance has been completed. However it also says the exchange is now under DDOS attack.

Bitcoin Suffers A Correction Amid Apparent DDOS Attacks On Some Exchanges

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Bitcoin is undergoing a classic correction after quintupling in price over the past 30 days. The currency, which was trading as high as $265 earlier today on Mt. Gox, plummeted and is now trading at around $150 .

We’ve reached out to one of the biggest exchanges, Mt. Gox, to see what happened. But another San Francisco-based exchange called TradeHill is saying that the crypto-currency is falling because of there are apparent distributed denial of service attacks on Mt. Gox and Bitstamp.  A denial of service attack happens when an attacker overwhelms a target with external requests, so that it can’t honor regular requests from legitimate users.

This also happened last week when Mt. Gox when Bitcoin reached $142 and hackers attacked the exchange. At that point, Mt. Gox said it had suffered  ”its worst trading lag ever.”

The Tokyo-based exchange said last week that hackers are engaging in a strategy to manipulate the price of the currency: “Attackers wait until the price of Bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panic-sell their Bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and start buying as much as they can. Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few days and they profit.”

It looks like this may be happening again. Aside from that, any kind of 400 percent increase over 30 days is probably unsustainable from a technical point of view. A correction at this point would be healthy and natural.

Bitcoin Thefts Surge, DDoS Hackers Take Millions

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Say you've created a cryptographic currency called bitcoin that promises users relative anonymity and untraceable transactions. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, of course, is that these virtues also appeal to hackers, malware developers, and organized crime rings who wouldn't think twice about committing virtual bank robberies.

Earlier this month, for example, Bitcoin Internet Payment System (BIPS), a Denmark-based Bitcoin payment processor, suffered a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Unfortunately for users of the company's free online wallets for storing bitcoins, the DDoS attack was merely a smokescreen for a digital heist that quickly drained numerous wallets, netting the attackers a reported 1,295 bitcoins -- worth nearly $1 million -- and leaving wallet users with little chance that they'd ever see their money again.

"On November 15th BIPS was the target of a massive DDoS attack, which is now believed to have been the initial preparation for a subsequent attack on November 17th," Kris Henriksen, the CEO of BIPS, said via Reddit. "Regrettably, despite several layers of protection, the attack caused vulnerability to the system, which has then enabled the attacker/s to gain access and compromise several wallets."

BIPS has been conducting a digital forensic investigation and working with authorities to try to identify the perpetrators. It said that early results showed that the attack originated "from Russia and neighboring countries."

The BIPS heist followed two separate October attacks against Australia-based Inputs.io, in which attackers netted about $1.3 million in bitcoins after stealing all 4,100 bitcoins being held by the free e-wallet service.

The value of bitcoins continues to fluctuate wildly due to a bubble created by bitcoin speculators. In 2011, for example, the currency's value fell from $33 to just $1 per bitcoin before rising to more than $900 earlier this month on MtGox, the world's biggest bitcoin exchange. But that bubble burst the next day, when the value of bitcoins fell by half. As of early Wednesday, however, the currency's value had once again skyrocketed, trading at more than $980 on MtGox.

That rise in value has driven hackers to attack online wallet services that store bitcoins. "Each of these companies had been operating officially for only a few months, yet already had entrusted to them millions of dollars that are now in the hands of cybercrooks," Paul Ducklin, head of technology for Sophos in the Asia Pacific region, said Tuesday in a blog post .

Malware writers have also taken a keen interest in bitcoins, with some -- especially Russian gangs -- modifying their crimeware tools to identify and steal any bitcoins found on infected PCs. "There are numerous malware families today that either perform Bitcoin mining or directly steal the contents of victims' Bitcoin wallets, or both," according to a blog post from Robert Lipovsky, a researcher at security firm ESET.

Other malware attacks have started closer to home. Last week, for example, the New Jersey state attorney general's office announced that it had settled a complaint it filed against Commack, N.Y.-based online gaming company E-Sports, as well company co-founder Eric Thunberg and software engineer Sean Hunczak. According to the complaint, Hunczak designed malware that infected about 14,000 computers that subscribed to the company's service, and which mined their PCs for bitcoins, which the perpetrators then sold for about $3,500. Under the terms of the state's $1 million settlement agreement, the company will pay a fine of $325,000, but the rest will be vacated, providing the company complies with a 10-year compliance program.

But not all bitcoin heists have been executed via hack attacks or malware. For example, a China-based bitcoin exchange called GBL launched in May. Almost 1,000 people used the service to deposit bitcoins worth about $4.1 million. But the exchange was revealed to be an elaborate scam after whoever launched the site shut it down on October 26 and absconded with the funds.

Given the potential spoils from a successful online heist, it's not surprising that related attacks are becoming more common. "Please be advised that attacks are not isolated to us and if you are storing larger amounts of coins with any third party you may want to find alternative storage solutions as soon as possible, preferably cold storage if you do not need immediate access to those coins," said Henriksen.

Bitcoin users have echoed that suggestion. "One note of warning: don't trust any online wallet," read a comment on a recent Guardian feature. "The two biggest ones have already been robbed. Use your own wallet on your own computer and back it up on a USB stick."

"Remember, you don't have to keep your Bitcoins online with someone else: you can store your Bitcoins yourself, encrypted and offline," said Ducklin at Sophos.

Knowing your enemy is the first step in guarding against him. In this Dark Reading report, Integrating Vulnerability Management Into The Application Development Process. we examine the world of cybercriminals -- including their motives, resources and processes -- and recommend what enterprises should do to keep their data and computing systems safe in the face of an ever-growing and ever-more-sophisticated threat. (Free registration required.)

Bitcoin Password Grab Disguised As DDoS Attack

Attacks against bitcoin users continue, as online forum Bitcointalk.org warns users their passwords might have been stolen in distributed denial of service hack.

Aficionados of the cryptographic currency known as Bitcoin might have gotten more than they bargained for recently, after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack appeared to be used as a smokescreen for launching a password-stealing attack against users of Bitcointalk.org.

Michael Marquardt (a.k.a. "Theymos"), one of the administrators of the popular bitcoin discussion forum, Sunday warned its 176,584 members of the attack. He said the attack had been traced to a flaw in the systems of domain registration firm AnonymousSpeech, which specializes in anonymous email, as well as running hosting servers outside the United States and the European Union. Attackers hacked AnonymousSpeech to change the bitcoin discussion forum's DNS settings to an attacker-controlled server.

According to Marquardt, the DNS redirection attack was spotted Sunday by forum manager Malmi Martti (a.k.a. Sirius), who immediately moved the domain to a different registrar. "However, such changes take about 24 hours to propagate," he warned, meaning that users remained at risk unless they logged on to the forum using its IP address, rather than trusting domain name servers to resolve to the non-malicious site.

What was the risk to forum users? "Because the HTTPS protocol is pretty terrible, this alone could have allowed the attacker to intercept and modify encrypted forum transmissions, allowing them to see passwords sent during login, authentication cookies, [personal messages], etc.," Marquardt said. "Your password only could have been intercepted if you actually entered it while the forum was affected. I invalidated all security codes, so you're not at risk of having your account stolen if you logged in using the 'remember me' feature without actually entering your password."

In other words, anyone who logged into the forum between Sunday and Monday, and who entered a password, should assume that it was compromised by attackers.

What were the bitcoin forum attackers gunning for? The most likely explanation would be participants' usernames and passwords, which -- if reused on other sites -- might have allowed attackers to drain people's online bitcoin wallets. Likewise, attackers might have been interested in gathering email addresses of people who are interested in bitcoins to target them -- via phishing attacks -- with malware designed to find and steal bitcoins from their PCs.

The DNS hack and DDoS attack against Bitcointalk are just the latest exploits in a long string of attacks targeting bitcoin e-wallet services and payment systems. Last month, Denmark-based bitcoin payment processor Bitcoin Internet Payment System suffered a DDoS attack that allowed the attackers to hide their real target: online wallets storing 1,295 bitcoins, which they successfully stole. At the time, their haul was valued at nearly $1 million.

As that haul suggests, the rise in bitcoin-related attacks can be attributed to the bitcoin bubble, which has seen the value of the cryptographic currency rise from a low of $1 per bitcoin in 2011, to $1,200 per bitcoin as of Wednesday.

The rise in bitcoin's value has lead to a number of malicious attacks, as well as a rise in efforts of a different nature. Last week, for example, Malwarebytes researcher Adam Kujawa warned in a blog post that a number of free toolbars and search agents have begun including bitcoin-mining software, which can consume massive amounts of system resources, slowing PCs to a crawl.

Bitcoin mining isn't inherently suspect. In fact, it's crucial to the success of bitcoins, because it's what records the chain of bitcoin transactions. Furthermore, the bitcoin system is set up to reward -- with bitcoins -- anyone who successfully solves related cryptographic puzzles that help maintain the public bitcoin ledger known as the "block chain." But some people have begun turning PCs into nodes in their personal bitcoin-mining empire, such as online gaming company E-Sports, which was recently hit with a related $325,000 fine by the New Jersey state attorney general's office.

In the case of toolbars and search agents with built-in mining software, however, users who agree to the accompanying end-user license agreement (EULA) might be authorizing a third party to turn their PC into a bitcoin-mining platform. "So take note if your system is running especially slow or if a process is taking up massive amounts of your processing power; it might be malware or even a [potentially unwanted program] running a miner on your system," said Kujawa at Malwarebytes.

"Looks like the bad guys are adapting all of their various technical attacks and business models to the bitcoin world," CounterHack co-founder and SANS Institute hacking instructor Ed Skoudis said in a recent SANS email newsletter, responding to the Malwarebytes report. "Given the stakes for rapid money-making here, we'll surely see even more creative bitcoin-related attacks in the near future."

Advanced persistent threats are evolving in motivation, malice and sophistication. Are you ready to stop the madness? Also in the new, all-digital The Changing Face Of APTs issue of Dark Reading: Governments aren't the only victims of targeted "intelligence gathering." Enterprises need to be on guard, too. (Free registration required.)