Bitcoin trojan costs one user $500,000

VIRTUAL CURRENCY Bitcoin has been targeted by malware authors with a trojan that nabs Bitcoin wallets.

F-Secure has analysed the Bitcoin wallet trojan that it calls Trojan-PSW:W32/CoinBit.A. An amateurish user interface belies what the application does, which is to find the Bitcoin wallet file and send it to a Hotmail address.

The Polish email server used to send the Bitcoin wallet file has supposedly had its password changed, however it is not possible to say whether variants of the Bitcoin wallet mugging application also use the same server and same Hotmail account to transfer Bitcoin wallet files.

One Bitcoin user claims he lost 25,000 Bitcoins to an attack by this malware. In forum posts that chap seems resigned to blame himself, however Bitcoin will have to address this issue to gain widespread credibility.

In recent months Bitcoin has been gaining more attention with news of Bitcoin mining botnets. Questions over the viability of Bitcoin, a decentralised digital currency, have persisted, though it has to be said that with this scam it's starting to look more like real money. µ